“SIS,” THE GAUNT WOMAN pleaded. “You’re biting your lip again. It tells me your nervous.”

“Sorry, Beck. I have a ton of pressure from work right now, and it shows in odd ways.”

“But you have non-stop pressure, Sara. Ever since I’ve known my sister, she felt the need to pressure herself. Achieve, achieve, achieve. And now you are firmly planted on this masterpiece of tainted canvas, even painting some part of it yourself. I’m just hoping you didn’t come here only to confirm your suspicions about my belief systems, my secretive sects, or what do you call it? Cohorts?”

Sara shook her head and grinned. “Just a marketing term, hon. Cohorts are my many audiences. Nothing serious.”

Becky sat feet-up on her tattered leather sofa. She was covered to her shoulders in a thick, blue and white patchwork comforter their mom had made years earlier. There was a moment of silence between the two, a rare moment when neither was supporting the other, neither was feeding or teasing the other. They both understood why.

Becky withdrew her arms from beneath the comforter and pulled her long, gray-brown hair out and away from her neck. Her once-proud, high cheekbones jutted out even more than Sara remembered, now that she lost so much weight.

“I don’t want you to stop communicating with me the way we always have,” Becky requested, “just because I’m sick.”

Sara felt the anger welling up and had to swallow hard to suppress the lump in her throat.

“I don’t get it, honestly. I never will. You know this disease is solvable. You could live a long and happy life. You don’t need to go through this suffering to prove the point that you’re right about things or a good trooper who is loyal to your beliefs. Being right means nothing when your dead. Dead only means dead, the end of all things.”

“Oh, you’re wrong, of course. I don’t see death as an end. Maybe an end of me as a separate being, but not an end to all. I believe in a God that pervades all things. Time. Space. Experience. Planets. Neutrinos. Consciousness. Belief systems. Even your beloved demagogue.”

“Look,” Sara leaned forward in her chair, “I’m not putting down your ‘belief system,’ as you say. You could be Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever the cult of the day is anymore. It just doesn’t make sense that if we have a cure, and if the cure is available to you, you wouldn’t take advantage of that.”

“We’ve spoken about this before.”

“About a lot of things.”

“You’re biting your lip again,” Becky laughed as she snuggled back under her comforter.

“But really, can’t you at least turn the heat up in this place? It’s too cold in the Pacific Northwest this time of year. No, it’s too cold every time of year. Hard to believe you’ve survived like this. How many years of going without decent heat or Internet? This can’t be helping your condition, and maybe it has weakened you to the point to where your body was unable to resist this cancer.”

Becky lifted her teacup and took a sip. “I get enough power from solar.”

“In this endless cloudscape? Hard to believe.”

“And if I run low, I do without. Like now. It’s temporary.”

“Electrical generation is almost all carbon neutral these days, so what’s the diff? I don’t understand how we could be sisters who were similar in so many ways, and where and how we diverged. It must have been that aberrant ex-husband of yours.”

“Okay. You know the rule. Please keep that whiny, cheating, self-absorbed bastard out of the conversation.”

“Sorry, hon.” Sara’s head dropped. “I can’t say it’s right for me, but this whole anti-tech movement seems entirely antithetical to human achievement.”

Becky laughed. “Oh, God, Sara. There’s so much to unwrap in what you said, I don’t know where to start.”

“C’mon. You guys want to unravel what humanity has created, as if our discoveries and advancements never existed.”

“Dear Sis. This indoor temp. It’s a little discomfort. Comes and goes. Everything comes and goes. If we parted in any way after our teen years, it was from me realizing a few things.”

“Like what?”

“We’ve talked before. I don’t care about discomfort. It’s a passing thing. Do I need to run an indoor heater to stay warm, just so more carbon can be pushed into the atmosphere to melt the dwindling ice at the poles?”

“Oh, boy. I shouldn’t have gone there,” Sara frowned.

Indeed, she had heard this before. However, she was willing to hear it again since it might be the last time to enjoy this narrative from her sister. Besides, the conversation added to her understanding of societal differences, and that more comprehensive perspective might lead to better control of narratives within her sister’s cohort.

“We fucked the future with climate change. Can you deny that?”

“Nope. Never have. Nobody can say the shorelines haven’t changed. Just look at a map.”

“Right. Well, see that globe there on the credenza?”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“See the shorelines?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A group of my friends and I were watching videos the other day from one of Vista’s favored channels, one surely controlled by your pal Ron and his dodgy capitalist oligarchs. It was a piece on how the shorelines really haven’t changed, that this last fifty years of polar ice cap melting was no different than in previous times. It claimed that geologic evidence of shoreline changes in the last few thousand years showed similar warming and freezing processes, and this is just a part of the normal cycle of the Earth. Nobody’s fault but Earth’s.”

“Oh, Becky. Seriously. We run stuff like that all the time. It’s nothing new. Certain groups believe what they want to believe, what they’re predestined or told to believe. I mean, ninety-five percent of citizens are so gullible, and I hate to say it, but they’re butt-ugly stupid. All you do is repeat the same message time and again. Not only will they grow to believe it, they’ll become active proponents and sell the narrative to others.”

“It’s wrong, you know. It’s lies. Propaganda. Decades of deceit and confusion. Anyone with half a brain would know they are being controlled by the AI algorithms, nudged little by little into their habit-forming rabbit holes, consuming content that compels them to watch more and more. Like giving a visual equivalent of crack cocaine to your addicted viewers, your goal is to garner eyeballs and whatever their equivalents are for those with a Vistachit. Why?”

She stopped, noticing that Sara’s eyes were beginning to glaze over.

“Why?” Sara asked. “I think we know.”

“Because you need them to buy what you’re selling. Sometimes it’s advertisers and products, but in many cases, they are purchasing Ron. Problem is, though, that most people don’t use even half their brains. They can’t curate what is sponged into their gray matter because you feed them so much belief-confirming crap. Your AI’s sole purpose is to render them helpless and unable to decide for themselves. I assume you have a big hand in these stories and that you are the master curator of the trash spewed constantly into the minds of Vista’s citizens.”

“Seriously! We all possess an invisible nose ring for others to manipulate, Dearie, and every story or headline or blurb from any source is a tug, whether we choose to believe so or not. Besides, you give me too much credit. I’m not that good, and I don’t keep track of every story my team runs for Vista. Some of it is mandated by the powers that be in Westrich, as I have no control over state-run narratives. Besides, for the companies who own these media channels, they can choose to run what they want most of the time. Ron doesn’t dictate everything.”

“Sara! That’s a lie you’ve become adept at telling yourself. They’re under the same set of controls everyone else in Westrich is under. For that sake, everyone else in the world. Their minds, the dialogues they tell themselves, are controlled by the wealthy and powerful oligarchs. Ron or friends of Ron. Ron and his trillionaire buddies. Ron and his extended families of riffraff. Ron or apparent enemies of Ron. So many aberrant, amoral abominations like Ron.”

Sara raised her hand. “What? What do you mean apparent enemies?”

“God, sister. Do you believe your ‘butt-ugly’ ninety-five percent are that naive? Do you think they don’t see how things have radically changed since the Debacle? Ron’s enemies are manufactured. They’re created, or at least embellished, by his AI to make it appear he has enemies. With them blasting at his ass, he can play the victim card, which is the always the first and second cards he plays. We must pity him. We must empathize with him. We must support him and feel like we belong on his team, despite his reprehensible remarks, criticisms, and actions. Despite his corrupt and insane ways. Only an idiot wouldn’t know that truth. We’ve heard the stories so repeatedly, they’re not only predictable now, they’re boring.”

Sara scanned the room. This old farmhouse, an hour southwest of Eugene, was likely safe. She was certain it would be considered a nominal risk by the state, a dwelling whose occupants didn’t require constant surveillance. Birds. Insects. Drones. Tiny machines with light-sensing or heat-sensing cameras. Micro-lenses, microphones, and recorders everywhere, feeding findings into various databases of the controlling AI monsters. Edgar’s monsters. But she detected none of it here, even though she suspected Ron or Edgar would have had good rationale to follow her.

She felt compelled to warn her sister, despite that fact that Becky was not long for the world.

“You know, Sis, this kind of speculative innuendo is not good for anyone. You can lose credits in the system. If your commentaries or discussions go too far, folks can show up at your door that you don’t want to show up.”

“Fuck the folks!” she declared. “I’ve never been afraid of saying what I felt. Never been afraid of an oligarch’s vengeance.”

“I know that. I just don’t want you to get into trouble, given the circumstances.”

“I’m sure Ron and his AI systems could care less about me. Who am I but your sister? A dying, middle-aged woman who spent most of her life doing all she could to live life in the original sense. This implicitly meant extracting myself from virtually all forms of tech. Virulent, corrupting, insidious tech that spews forth nothing but advertisements for products or apostacies to make me believe differently than my own common sense.”

Sara shook her head in disbelief. “C’mon, we’re not that bad.”

“I have seen so much violence and hatred spewed mercilessly on video, whether news or entertainment. So much consumed before my eyes that amplified negativity, imbalances, biases, fears, anger. And violence against women? What channel can you watch for fifteen minutes without reference to a violent act on women, or hybrids, or minorities?”

“Yeah, but it’s what people choose to consume. You can’t blame me for feeding them the violence or bias-confirming foods they desire. They hunger for it, and I spoon it in. Besides, you live your life like a old-time farm girl. Look at you. With my connections, you could be wealthy and enjoying life like me. You know I’d always help you if you needed anything, and I have ready access to everything pleasurable in life.”

“This is where I can’t understand why you don’t understand. Don’t you see? Life is not about avoiding pain. It’s not about the orgasmic jolt of gaining stuff like possessions, power, self-importance, ego, wealth. It’s not about always getting a one-up on your latest self-perceived enemy. Once you do, the enemies always change.”

“But that’s part of my fun, Dearie. I like the challenge of it.”

“No, Sara. You aren’t getting it, and you never will. You do these things because of your ego, to prop up a fragile, yearning, and fearful sense of self. Fearful you’d become useless if you were to drop out, now that you’re at the top of the game. I doubt you even get time to enjoy those creature comforts you work so tirelessly for.”

“Eventually I will, when I’m less busy. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Everything wrong with that,” Becky lamented, taking another sip. “Not to pick on you, but you and the others like you are experts at rationalizing away everything you harm along your path of destruction.”

“What does that mean?”

“You excuse your actions by reiterating imagined proofs that there’s a greater good behind it all.”

“Like, what proofs?”

Becky sighed loudly. The conversation was taking more energy than she could give.

“Like, all proofs. Look at your boss. Get out of your own skin for a minute and look at him truthfully. He’s a pathetic human or hybrid or AI drone. Whatever. A pathological liar, and I assume you assist him in that effort. He perceives he’s a god, the only one who can lead us to his concept of a fucking nirvana, one where we all take turns at pleasuring and praising him. Yet, has anyone ever informed us about the nirvana we’re supposed to attain by supporting him? He’s a self-absorbed and dangerous man-child, forcing us to worship him. If one courageous person remains alive and does not kiss his fecal ring, it’s proof to his fragile ego that he’s unworthy. So he must continue his narcissistic quest to control everything within his realm. All minds. All energies. All emotions. All focus. All productive efforts. All intentions.”

“Well, our media has been very good about describing what Ron’s doing for us. And, you know, he’s always on the firing line. He has constant pressure from the other Westrich domains, with competitors and enemies internally and externally who constantly grasp at taking him down. He’s got that freaking Westrich senate and house crap left over from the reformed constitution. They put undue pressure on him, much less the heat he gets from the laughable, piece-of-shit judicial branch. And crap, he’s got the longest border of any domain in the world! It swings all the way up here from Texas. Imagine trying to monitor and guard that border when you control the poorest of domains!”

“Oh, yes, he has issues. Victimization issues, certainly. Poor Ron, so much on his shoulders. I’ll bet the bastard sits and watches his vidscreens all day to ensure he’s being adequately loved. He or his AI consume the trash spewed on those screens, vomited-out by his wealthy compadres who own the media and your team who pukes narratives to them as well. Am I right?”

“You’re simplifying.”

“Nonetheless. For you personally, you’re rationalizing everything in your own context. You are his enabler as well as the other oligarchs and tycoons who support him. This same dynamic is true for Ron and the other oligarchs in Westrich or the world, for that matter, a world that is rapidly deteriorating. Like drug dealers needing their supply and support infrastructures, all oligarchs need enablers. Little profiteers and beggars around them who carry out their orders, who bow to them as if they’re ordained by God to carry out their righteous mission for humanity.”

Sara shook her head in disagreement. “Not a hundred percent correct, Beck. His main mission is to protect us; to keep us safe. That job is embedded in the reformed constitution and isn’t his idea or mine. It was decided after the Debacle, after too many years of death and disarray. It’s not my fault this is the way things are.”

“As if things are what they are and are therefore unchangeable.”

Sara ignored the inference. “And look, I don’t rationalize. I know exactly what my team is doing, and we’re doing the best we can under the circumstances. Do you know how many viral and other genetic tech threats he stops every year? Do you know how difficult it is to seal a border that long and porous? What about all those cross-border commercial flights for business? Just think of the economic damage from the Spanish flu or Coronavirus outbreaks, and those were natural.”

“Rationalizations for bad behavior.”

“Then there are the ones that followed, including the Debacle pestilence. And now we have basement brewers creating this virulent crap nonstop. We have AI growing sentient and powerful. Add to that religious sects and cults and secret shit extremists and armed militias throughout the territory, all fueled by their social media and AIs. I’m amazed he does so well for Westrich. Yet, everyone treats him and his team so poorly.”

Becky stared at Sara, grinning.

“What? Do I have something in my teeth?” Sara asked, poking her fingernail into her front incisor.

“No, no pieces of spinach,” she chortled. “You just reminded me of Mom when you said that. Look, I’m not blaming you. You have your important job at the top of this autocracy and peak of societal significance, whatever that is anymore. I know you can’t possibly separate yourself from your self-image. You speak these things aloud because you have an unsolvable, irrational contradiction rolling around constantly in your psyche. A continuous battle. Left hemisphere versus right. Decency versus indecency. Truth versus anti-truth. Good versus evil. Control versus disarray. Order versus entropy. I could go on.”

“Go on, then.”

“As your sister, one who can now be less cautious about what she says, I must say the things I’ve held back as I watched you change.”

Sara was puzzled. “What do you mean? You’ve always told me what you thought.”

“Oh, no I haven’t.” Becky shook her head. “I allowed you the deference of being the alpha dog. ‘A Number One.’ Older sister. Got all the attention. Demanded all the attention.”

“I can’t handle the birth order argument right now . . .”

“Regardless. We have brains that rationalize why we do or don’t do things, right? I rationalize why I won’t add more carbon to the atmosphere. Or why I rebel against tech, or constant media lies, or attempts to incite and elicit my emotion to hate someone or buy something or love an aberrant, corrosive demagogue. Or why I won’t seek treatment. It’s all rationalization. Belief systems.”

“And my belief system is somehow less perfect?”

“No. There’s no measure of perfection when it comes to rationalization. But, dear sister, you’re on the deep end of rationalizing what you do and your role in it. How you enabled this degradation of humanity. You rationalized, knowing it’s all wrong, that it is inherently wrong, even evil at times and maybe most of the time. You rationalized because it was confusing. Some of what Ron and his oligarch cronies do is indeed beneficial. They control systems that help people get fed, enable commerce, keep them relatively safe from genetic attacks. Such things confuse the neuron pathways.”

“Of course!” Sara confirmed. “I’m always creating narratives around that. Nobody could deny Ron and others like his industrialists and government agencies are engaged and working for the common good. They wouldn’t be doing their job, otherwise.”

“Right. But one little thing. A missed point. The human mind is incapable of comprehending dichotomies.”

“Why say that?”

“Confusing dichotomies, like how Ron could be helpful and beneficial in a handful of instances, but viciously evil in many more, all in one packaged persona. As if the few things he does right excuse the horrors he otherwise unleashes. As if the comments he makes about what a great job he’s doing are adequate consolation to those he damages.”

“I don’t see him as evil, at least not very often. He’s immoral, perhaps, or amoral is probably a better term for it.”

“I can’t help you understand this, but I’ll say it anyway. Nobody is superior to me. Nobody. No human. No mech demigod. No autocratic demagogue. No tyrant. No hybrid. No child. No preacher. No packaged persona. Nothing. Yet, on the flip side, none is inferior to me.”

“And this matters why?”

“Because so few people in the world believe this way. Most are so accustomed to the deceit, lies, and fusillade of falsehoods with occasional bullets truth. Rhetoric. Bombast. You effectively have tired us out, Sis. Exhausted us. You, your media, your channels. Your constant idolatry of a single, purportedly superior being, or in some cases, a circle of beings. Demigods, demagogues, autocrats, authoritarians, populists, trillionaires, tyrants, tycoons, industrialists, judges, senators.”

“Not everyone is inherently evil.”

“But most in power today are, and we know it. People are overwhelmed and fed up. In their frustration, they look for someone, anyone, who will lie openly to them, ring all the right bells for them, promise all the righteous things they are entitled to but never getting nor willing to pay for. Add two shakes of egregious name calling, victimization, sick humor and self-righteousness to the recipe, and your cohorts eat it up like flies on shit.”

“You just described my job. But there’s nothing wrong. Everyone does it. This is what Ron must do to survive. What we must do.”

“Okay, go ahead and tell me Ron and his cronies don’t actually control it all. Tell me even the most insignificant little Internet rag in the farthest reaches of Vista is not in some way controlled or levered by you guys and your machine, or by your drone equivalents elsewhere in the world.”

“Ow, girl! Comparing me to a drone. That hurts.”

“I love my sister, but I’m telling you what you continue to deny about yourself and the walking abhorrence of human flesh you support. Feel I need to before I leave this place.”

Sara didn’t think she was hurt by this. Her sister was too unaware to understand the complexities. Lack of exposure to the media had probably affected her ability to comprehend the implications of why things were the way they were. She rose from her chair.

“More tea?” she asked.

“Sure. You mad?”

“No.”

“I meant to say, ‘You mad yet because you might get there if you continue to listen to my parting complaints about the world.’ I suppose you’re my captive audience, for now.”

“Like I’m going to get mad at my little sister. I know why you say these things. I’m generally in touch with the different belief systems and cohorts. It’s part of my purpose in life; my expertise.”

“Cohorts!” her sister laughed. “It’s all marketing. Just executing perfectly. Doing your job, I know. Here. Take my cup. There’s more to come.”

“Oh, lucky me.” Sara rolled her eyes and headed back into the kitchen.

***

Sara sat down in her chair and stared at the honey slowly evaporating in the bottom of the cup as she stirred the tea.

Becky continued, feeling like she had not fully communicated her thoughts during what was possibly the last time she’d have the opportunity.

“I suppose you think me simplistic, but there’s a difference between ‘simplistic’ and ‘simple.’ The problem we have here, the problems we have in the world, are all a result of cause and effect from one thing.”

“And that thing is, great sage?”

“Concentration, or maybe better said as just good old leverage. Leverage cooked the goose, killed the cat, fried the tomatoes of humanity.”

“I’m don’t understand, but I’m listening. All ears.”

“I’ll go back a bit. Think of early in this century to the first Great Recession, among the multiple others that followed. I won’t go into detail because you know the details. Bank execs had corrosive incentives to jack-up earnings. Their stock grants were forms of leverage intended to enrich them and corrupt the capitalistic system. Even minor bumps to the bottom line enabled major bumps to their personal wealth. So, they became less concerned about managing businesses and more about getting rich.”

Sara smiled. “Nothing wrong with getting rich.”

“Then you had the recessions of the twenties. Government banking systems lowered rates to nothing, even below zero. More crazy lending that drove bad spending and high-risk investment behaviors. Corporate entities bought their own stock, further levering earnings for stock-grant crazed execs. Shares soared again into an enormous bubble. Flagrant money printing caused tremendous devaluations in currencies and ultimately devastating inflation, further pressing the disadvantaged.

“Okay, that’s all history.”

“Who won from the societal messes that followed? Those who already had leverage and real assets. And what did this cause? Further imbalances of wealth in a teetering world. Government overthrows. Growing autocracies and crony governments. Unpayable debts. Plutocrats and populists in control. Further promises of entitlements to people without the means to pay for them or ever realize them. Ultimately, this led to the morass of demagogues, demigods, plutocrats, and technocrats we have today. Nobody is free, only controlled to a slightly lesser or greater degree. Like me, most people sit at the hind-end of the global authoritarian poop shoot. We’re the bacteria barely surviving on the anus of life, consuming the digested table scraps before being unceremoniously discarded.”

“I didn’t know you were such an avid fan of economics.”

“Business degree. Good school.”

“I know. I helped put you through.”

Becky chuckled. “And see what good it has done you. But I digress. The leverage was multi-layered. Look at politics in America. They hung onto a bastardized system of states’ rights, just when states were becoming meaningless and your ‘cohorts’ were becoming much more important due to the Internet that let people commune virtually. Forget local town criers. In that new medium, they could condensate, boil, and stew relentlessly in their own belief systems, like overcooked vegetables, irrespective of state borders. What happened as a result? Rural states, fueled by anger of these growing imbalances, amplified and entrenched themselves in their unrighteous power to retain a disproportionate quantity of Senators, Reps, and electoral votes.”

“But we don’t have that problem now . . .”

“That’s because the demagogues have forever prevented individuals or dissenting voices from holding any power.”

“Not true. There are still mostly two parties, and people can still vote.”

“This ancient, unadaptable political system was super-jacked to excel at providing unfair leverage. Gerrymandering. Denying equal votes to people, especially people of color, and levering the advantage to the few already advantaged. Then, when the opposing team somehow got installed, it was payback time. Bad payback time. Exposing and castrating the sinners of the past. Forever silencing the dissenting voices. Then more fracturing. More leverage by backroom or front-page personalities, and the disturbing cycles of misanthropic leverage began anew, at least until the Debacle.”

“You’re overstating how bad the government was at managing things.”

“And don’t get me going on a court system that considered equivalencies to people. First, it started with corporations having equal rights as humans. Then rights were extended to AIs, which are functionally endless in quantity, all with an equal voice and vote as a person. What foresight in such decisions! Not only did companies have undue power, but now, a tech god could create as many AI’s as possible and lever the hell out of that new voting bloc, creating a designed-in advantage. Fuck the others! It only mattered if you were part of the few on the winning side, the one with all the power. And in the noise of the new order, those voices of humanity, the distant cries of flesh and bone human minds, were trampled asunder.”

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“I don’t deny much of what you say. The past was not exactly fair to regular people. But I’m unclear how your leverage analogy relates to what we have today.”

“Leverage is so pervasive and embedded, you are unable to see it. It’s the old adage of asking the fish ‘how’s the water’ and the fish responds, ‘what is water?’ You have no idea. All you and your team see is a concentric set of circles on a whiteboard representing your cohorts. What partial truth-lies do you tell this cohort? What sappy Ron-the-victim story do you tell another? How do you amplify the anti-Ron, anti-administration messages so this cohort’s biases can be confirmed? So they can get a jolt of endorphins when they just heard a message that hits home with their belief constructs, even though ninety percent of it is falsehoods or innuendos?”

“You’re stating that my team is effective, then?”

Becky was on a roll. “You do this, of course, to keep Ron’s face and voice front and center, on everyone’s mind at all times. Hounding them, following them, haunting them. They can’t get away from it. He’s their all. Their god-human. Their godhead. The face that must always be seen. The voice that must always be heard. Ron is the wet dream of media companies on all sides, continually providing those orgasmic advertising and viewing returns. You’re using old strategies that abhorrent yellow journalists used to lever and control their societies, their consumers and viewers, their cohorts. It’s all about advertising, making a buck, empowering and inflating one’s ego, and maintaining control over the media. Leveraged fascism times ten, using an entertaining but always psychotic and unpredictable personality as its deity and figurehead.”

Sara was unmoved by Becky’s arguments.

“I’m not sensing fascism or leverage in what I do. I’m only seeing that if I wasn’t doing it, a hundred others on my team or elsewhere would gladly step into the role. If you’re complaining I’m on a train that won’t stop, maybe this is true, and some folks will get crushed under the wheels or swept aside as it passes. I can’t control what happens. The inertia and power and direction are what they are. The machine exists, and it takes talented people to grease the wheels and keep it in prime condition. I’m one of those with the grease in my hands, at least for now.”

“Sara,” Becky concluded, “you do this willingly, whether you admit it or not.”

“This is not my life’s plan, you know. It’s not that fulfilling, and I doubt I’ll be doing this ten years from now. Body and mind won’t withstand the boredom and pressure.”

“And I’m not here ten years from now to see what’s become of my sister. I won’t see the Sara who has finally come clean. Repented. Stolen her damaged psyche into isolation. Absolved herself from past sins. The Sara who stopped feeding humanity’s doomsday machine just as it hurls itself over the precipice.”

Sara was finally getting perturbed. “Who said it’s doomsday? What Ron asks for, what I and the other ministers give him, is not about doom. We do what we can to help our citizens.”

“You rationalized a vicious cycle. You manufactured truths for your cohorts, uncorrelated to facts. You fed it to them, nonstop. Then you jacked-it-up, amped-it-up, to keep them interested. The more inane and outlandish the story about Ron and his enemies, the better, irrespective of which side of the coin is consuming. The more anger, self-pity, or adoration the story evokes, the better.”

“Like I said, somebody’s got to do it if not me.”

“I see you ministers as hamsters on their wheels. You’re focused on taking yet another bite of the golden, luscious carrot of enhanced self-image that dangles in front of you, not the truth that surrounds you. You’re enmeshed in self-comforting, self-confirming, self-confining information. No truth, just what feels good or elicits strong emotions in the moment. You have no ethics, no common morality, and no common purpose or goal.”

“I fear, dear sister, that your cloistered religious beliefs are peeking out from your words.”

“I haven’t mentioned God once, not in any context. I am saying that your little hamster wheels have no ethical basis. There’s no common agreement among any ministers in any domain in any nation-state. Now, you might say nobody wants to experience another Great Debacle, but even that’s a stretch because nothing was ever formalized for humankind, not even after billions died.”

“We take so much care to ensure the safety and livelihood of our citizens. Within that is an implication that we, the government, care about their well-being. That’s implied. That’s obvious.”

“You’re Minister of Social Infrastructure? Are you truly listening to what people are saying, or is your attention always pointed upward to meet Ron’s demands? I mean, I hear the guy’s a real piece of work, so being in-touch with your team and the citizens beneath you may be impossible.”

“Look, my team and I get along just fine. They know I care about them.”

“But your job isn’t being fulfilled. You’re supposed to provide Ron with input about the condition of Vista’s citizens. Where their heads are, right?”

“Sure, that’s some of it, along with the communications responsibilities. I do that.”

“It sounds like something different, though. It sounds like you and your team and other ministers spend most of their time serving Ron’s needs. His distorted and disgusting whimsies. His rages and torments. His threats and narcissistic demands. Look, the people I communicate with believe the Earth is in its last days of rotation, at least for humanity. There’s far too much tech, too much risk in tech, and too many people or AIs who have too much capability to annihilate us. All this annihilation tech in so many incapable hands like Ron’s, without any ethical construct for the race. Imagine that. And I’m far from alone in this thought.”

“Why include AIs in this?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Sis. I haven’t met a person yet who wouldn’t bet that AIs are sentient and likely running the whole damn government for Westrich. Maybe they’re running our reign on Earth into the ground on purpose, surreptitiously planning the rapid demise of mankind. That’s no longer a moderately fringe idea.”

“I know about that cohort, but I can’t speak to what sentience is. I’m no expert. I do think, Beck, that you are being influenced too heavily by your anti-tech or religious rhetoric. Maybe you’re involved with these conspiracy-theorist cults, whom I also love. And all you just mentioned about self-confirming info? You may be guilty of that yourself.”

“Hardly. I don’t read much beyond physical books. Classics usually. I’m anti-tech because I am. Met a guy, liked a guy. Had no idea of what a Stoic was. Simply grew up like he did. One day he read a book from Seneca, a Roman Stoic. Then he realized others thought very much like him. I’m no different. I saw. I decided. I sacrificed. Sacrifices turned into significant advantages.”

Sara frowned. “I’ve never met a hermit who wasn’t self-righteous about having found a true inner path, and only he can provide guidance to attain it.”

“Hard for you to relate to this, I understand. True quiet. Living in the moment. Creativity. Writing stuff nobody will ever read. Calm. Logic. In control of my emotions and passions. All this without the need for a constant information barf in my ears. Without an endorphin and ego jolt from consuming the bias-confirming swill of my cohorts. Without a need for excessive creature comforts. And when it comes to God, the same applies. I read religious books and learned writers. I stay far away from three-hundred-word blurbs, summaries of summaries of summaries, where all meaning is lost in translation. Such word aggregations are cupcakes for the mind.”

“Okay, so you are who you are. It’s not me, though. Your older sister is different. That doesn’t create any divergence between us, does it? It certainly doesn’t in my mind.”

“Of course not. You can’t know how much it means to me that you’re here, and I understand your pressures. Worse yet, you work directly for one of the world’s, what would you say, thousand or so abominations? The ruling oligarchs. I don’t know how many there are, but my sister works directly for one. She takes pride in what she does. And we weren’t born in this world to agree on everything. Again, I haven’t spoken plainly about these topics before because I didn’t want you to hear them or possibly get into trouble by communing with me.”

“Why would I get into trouble?”

“Because I don’t agree with the fascist states that we and most others in the world live in now. I suppose I’m a radical, which is dangerous. As a typical fascist state, Vista and Westrich are all about controlling the populace – how they think, what they think, what their minds are fed, how they poop, how they wipe, what they say, the toothpaste they use. This is the inherent nature of controlling entities that concentrate power, wealth, and entitlements at the top of the pyramid. They’re always on guard, and understandably so. Hyperaware of their eminent positions atop the shit castle and the possibility they’ll one day be toppled should the masses beneath them, flailing and bobbing in the sewage, begin to care enough to take action.”

“I know you’ve never been pleased with the current way of things. I think you give too much credit for how the world used to be. It wasn’t all that great decades ago.”

“But it was clearly better not that long ago. This menace began in the late teens and twenties as America drifted toward fascism and oligarchies and crushing the rule of law. It escalated after the Coronavirus effects on border closings, racial bias exacerbation, and populist nationalism of the twenties. Fascism didn’t need the Debacle. It had hordes of rabid senators and congresspeople and justices and governors who fell for demagogues with stories of how they alone could fix things.”

“That’s politicians. They’ll never change, Dearie.”

“But shame on this thoughtless, entitled scum for their lack of vision, their selfishness, their desire to retain their jobs and power and wealth that came with their feigned alignments to dogmatic credos. Shame on them for fear of being forced to vacate their lofty positions should they do what was right for humanity versus expedient for themselves. Shame on them for supporting laws and decisions that eroded historical norms of decency and rightful actions. Shame on them for worshiping false Gods in the form of other humans, no less, breaking the first and most sacred commandment. Shame on them for not recognizing or admitting they were engaged in idol worship, whether it was towards a demagogue or dogma. And after too many years of this ethical destruction came the post-Debacle age, amplifying the pre-existing inequities and imbalances. It accelerated us down the dark, painful path of no return.”

“I get it, Beck, but you stretch reality. I don’t find the masses discontented. I keep tabs. It’s my job, and I have teams of folks on this topic doing continuous research. I don’t see discontented. I see a lot of compliance. Full bellies. I see people who are protected and secure. Some are employed as well. Those aren’t bad things, right?”

“This is what you see, but you only grasp the surface of the pond. Beneath its placid surface are vicious and torrential currents. Concerns by individualists that you have taken away their freedoms. Humans and hybrids rebelling at the continued government pressure to embed subdermal chips in their foreheads. You know what people call that small wonder of technology, that Vistachit? The nasty tech that ties itself into your optic nerve and God knows what else it controls? They see the three stacked hexagrams, the three letters that look like sixes, and they think it’s the Biblical devil’s mark.”

Sara smiled broadly. She was proud of this narrative. “I probably shouldn’t divulge this fact, but we specifically branded the Vistachit that way to embellish belief and fear narratives among groups of zealots. We always strive to heighten emotions since people are more pliable when upset, excited, or suspicious. Conspiracies, intrigues, belief confirmations, animosities, victimization. This is the emotional the clay I work in.”

“You’re saying you prey on people’s emotions intentionally? And what good comes from that in the end?”

“Becky, we keep tabs on literally thousands of these cults of crazies. Who knows what they’d do if we didn’t manage their behaviors? We even stoke the discourse, flavor it and allow it to simmer, then boil and simmer again. It keeps adherents engaged and focused on Ron and Westrich leadership, and out of trouble otherwise. Dear sister, these are old and useless prophesies, and many variants on the original theme emerge daily from these groups. You know how many continue to believe the obelisk of forty years ago came from demons in the sky? Aliens with horns? Besides, it’s not like anything terribly bad has happened to humanity since the rise of the oligarchies.”

“Except the oligarchies themselves.”

Sara laughed. “Considering what came before them, I’d take what we have now. Their success is proof enough that the structure works per plan. Narratives. It’s only narratives. We may extend right up to the hairy edge at time, then back off a little so things don’t get completely out of hand. We’re not fomenting violence in the streets, at least not usually. And what else would people do in their spare time?”

“So you manage people without having a full appreciation of the implications? Think, Sara, of the many upset citizens, most still mourning and yearning for what life was like before the Debacle. People they lost. Property, possessions, memories. Dreading a next Debacle. Do you think they don’t notice when an entire town of ten thousand drops off the maps? When they mysteriously can’t get in touch with relatives? They know it was another fucking genetic freak show mutating virus released by some backwoods nut or another nation-state.”

“All citizens live with that likelihood. It’s a risk of living in this day and age, especially among the border towns.”

“Indeed. No different than an accident or incurable cancer. Some are simply unlucky.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I digressed. The point was fascism. Call it a nicer name, but I’ll stick with that. You understand some people don’t like to be controlled and constantly monitored? They don’t like walking into a store and getting zapped by mind control tech that some university invented decades ago and got rich on. They don’t like being goaded by constant advertising that preys on their individual weaknesses, their hidden desires, and coerces them to spend money on something they’d otherwise keep repressed. They don’t like wondering if a freaking ladybug in the shower could be a nanobot from the kid next door taking pictures of them, or from Ron himself. They want normalcy. A modicum of human decency, mental tranquility, and privacy. They want people to be nicer to each other. Friendly, if nothing else.”

“But you know that dreamscape doesn’t exist any longer. Not for most, and less so since the Debacle. The only way we ever got past those years of disarray was by establishing the oligarchies, by recreating tech-driven governments that could defend against whatever new threats might arise. AI. Nano-armies. Genetic viral or bacterial agents. Even the damn aliens who never arrived. These were sources of fear. We needed strong, heavy-handed governments to help the populace manage their fears and live productive lives, even if you consider those actions fascist.”

“You remember the Borg?”

“The Borg?”

“Yeah. When we watched those old Star Trek series?”

Becky could tell her sister didn’t understand.

“It was the idea that humans are individuals working together hopefully to improve society, with freedom of thought and other freedoms central to our individual beings. The Borg was a collective. All were drones, of the bee kind, not the flying purveyors of citizen monitoring and death that are in the air now.”

“Oh, now I recall. Robotic humans, not unlike a bunch of people I know personally in Austin. At the time they made the show, I’m sure they thought it would take centuries to reach that level of tech. Yet, it only took a few decades.”

“Yeah. But the fact is that many people, being born as free individuals, want to stay as such.”

“I wouldn’t say people are free at birth. Somebody controls them, usually a parent. And I don’t consider a little chip in someone’s forehead a huge imposition. It lets us act like a parent and keep track of them for a variety of reasons, the least of which is to prevent another Debacle. I mean, really, how different is it when you hold a cellphone in your hand versus having a chip under your skin to provide you with the same info at your command? Sure, we could still track them if they used a cellphone. But with the Vistachit, it’s much more effective and safer.”

“I get the argument. Some of it started in the twenties with that Coronavirus mess. To allay future spread of similar pathogens, governments needed more control of where people were at any point in time. Where they’d been. Events like that wedged open the door to the budding, new proto-oligarchs who were no different in character than the horrific dictators of the past. But they now possessed a rich, useful rationale to consolidate power and control over individuals and their rights. In fact, that’s when the trillions in handouts started to be awarded in order to placate the masses. And the proto-oligarchs, in turn, used these trillions to expand their influence among cobwebs of sketchy supporters and enablers. So many trillions passed among the few rich and powerful. So much concentration of wealth. Ah, the missteps countries make in times of fear.”

“How did we get off on that topic? I thought we were talking Vistachits,” Sara asked.

“Sorry. Mind wandering,” Becky admitted. “Okay, my point is this. In order to not just survive but thrive, you must have the chip. It gives you all the information, all the advantages that allow you to compete, to live a fuller life, to experience the richness of living that you couldn’t experience as directly through cellphones or auggies. I hated wearing auggies. Just so uncomfortable. Again, if you love this tech so much, why didn’t you ever chip?”

“Don’t you recall? Ron only lets certain of his ministers have them. He much prefers that my team and I stay ‘clean,’ as he puts it. Doesn’t want us being biased by too many AI-bred sources. Trusts my judgment as is. But I wouldn’t mind having one installed.”

Sara noticed her sister’s eyes were closing in the last exchange. “Dearie, am I boring you?”

“No, Sis. I easily tire these days. Need to rest every few hours, you know. You won’t go yet, will you? Staying the night?”

“Of course. I leave tomorrow and have one more stop before going back to Austin. My security crew will knock on the door in the morning, then we’re off. Sorry about the short stay, but I’ve got some urgent matters that came up recently and Ron’s hot on them. I’ll be back as soon as this minor concern is under full control.”

“Doc says it’s weeks for me. He insists I die in the hospital, extending my life using some old chemo, not the new genetic cure stuff. I told him ‘go suck the big one, bub.’ He laughed and said he wished all his patients were as feisty as me.”

Tears began pouring down Sara’s face, and she quickly wiped them away as she rose from her chair. “Okay, you take a nap. I’ll be quiet. Maybe I’ll even grab one of those books you talked about. God,” she admitted as she walked into the kitchen, “I haven’t picked up a physical book in so many years. It’s only been edited news blurbs, press releases, and presentations.”

She looked back at her sister. “My girl,” she thought. “My poor girl. I love her so, and there is so little I love elsewhere. Much we’ve been through together. Nobody would ever know except for us. And I can’t change her mind. A cure exists, and she could likely live forever if she wanted. Odd what a belief in God will do to you, that anyone would choose uncertainty and faith over certainty and life. But I don’t sense she’s happy with certainty, at least not the certainty of the world she sees today.”

***

“Sara?”

“What, Beck? You’re awake?”

Becky’s hands emerged from beneath her comforter. “I’m kind of hungry, which is a good sign. I haven’t been much lately.”

“Indeed, hon. You’ve dropped a bit of poundage since I last saw you.”

“This cancer makes me sick in the head sometimes. Dizzy, and when you’re dizzy, you don’t feel like eating.”

“I’ll make you something,” Sara offered.

She had been sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book in the dim overhead light. “Here’s your pans, and I just found the soup. Tomato leek okay?”

“Perfect,” Becky replied, turning her head to see what she was up to. “What book are you reading?”

Sara laughed. “One I pulled from the shelf. It was ratty and dog-eared. Besides, it looked small compared to those thicker novels on your bookshelf.”

“The Upanishads. Is that right?”

“I guess, if that’s the way you say it.”

“It is,” Becky confirmed.

She closed her eyes and counted the heartbeats in her ears. “Remember, Becky, remember that euphoric feeling from a good rest? That mental and physical high? You’d not want to emerge. All things were right in the moment. Awareness of the within and without. Too few of those moments remain, but not to dwell.”

“Where are the controls for the stove, Dearie?”

“It’s electric. Runs off my batteries from solar. An old style. You just turn the knob and give it a few seconds to heat the coil. No computers in this stove. So, what did you think?” Becky asked, her head tilted back and eyes closed.

“The stove? I think it’s old.”

“No, the book.”

She laughed. “The parables were about God, I guess. Wish I could say I believed like you. Wish I could. Maybe it gives you special comfort. For me, it’s a legacy of ancient humanity and no longer relevant in today’s world.”

“Did you ever believe?”

“No, not really. I never even wondered. I assume we are born like a cow or a cat and have a bit more conscious awareness than them – at least some of us. That’s the only thing that differentiates humans. I honestly can’t speak to those hybrid transhumans who claim they commune with God. Who knows what occurs in their Magellanic visions of data and cloud consciousness? I have no idea what those people, if you can call them that anymore, see or think of a god or God. In my experience, most of them believe they’ve achieved god-states right here on Earth, and you can’t blame them. They know all things there are to know about the world, given their access to databases, and they have amazing predictive powers. As an unaltered person, I often have difficulty communicating with those aberrant wizards.”

“Hmm,” Becky acknowledged, “maybe they see something we don’t see. But for me, I believed in God from the first moment I can remember thinking about it. Did it arise from our Sunday school indoctrination? I don’t think so. I found that very boring. No, just look at creation. Savor this consciousness. Presence. Being. Awareness of self and separateness from all things, while sensing that you are part of it all. That’s where my head was, far back into childhood. It was no special gift, only something I knew to be true. To intuit and feel this moment, that’s all. Like this moment, God simply is.”

“Yeah, I was kind of getting a similar message from your tattered book, although it’s unlike most religious books I’ve ever heard of.”

“Funny you gravitated to that one.”

“Wanted to see what my little sister found so interesting that she’d dog-ear the pages.”

“The Upanishads matched my own beliefs. Like that guy I mentioned before. What were we talking about then?” Becky scratched her head, pausing to see if her foggy mind could recall the conversation from hours earlier.

Sara carried the soup bowl on a tray and set it down on the coffee table. She stared at the steam rising in the cool room.

“Sorry, Becky. I don’t think anything could convert me into a believer of more than what I see every day. It’s a cesspool of waste that most seem to call ‘life’ these days. But it’s my cesspool, I guess.”

Becky sat up and took a sip of soup. “Thanks, Sara. When did it start to decline for us?”

“What? The soup or the sewage?”

“The latter. The cesspool you mentioned. Was it this way a hundred years ago?”

“Don’t think so. A hundred years ago was the nineteen-seventies. It was a cakewalk then compared to today.”

“There were nukes,” Becky observed. “Hatreds. Bigotry. Ethnic cleansings. Terrible inequities. No different.”

Sara smacked her lips. “Sure, and they are still with us a hundred years hence, but with even more vigor. Nobody could have predicted what would occur starting in the twenties. First it was natural pathogens coming out of the woodwork and lots of death and fear. Too many people in tight areas can be a natural pathogen’s best friend. Then it was the CRISPR parade of home brewers concocting their magical elixirs to do God knows what – save the world, kill the world, kill only certain people based on their heritage, integrate transgenic code into human DNA, enhance and abuse their bodies, evolve themselves into god-beings. I could go on. Oh, and I didn’t mention anti-aging tech that blew the lid off the fragile social order.”

“That’s just it, though, isn’t it?” Becky added. “Tech was going to occur at the pace it did, irrespective of our efforts. In hindsight, there were other things humans should have done for themselves without the help of tech, or at least concurrent with it.”

Sara was puzzled. “I don’t see how that could happen. What could you do for yourself without tech to help? You aren’t going to grow gills by swimming in the water, girl. It takes AI-designed DNA code to do that.”

“I guess,” Becky shrugged, “but that’s not what I meant. Humans were wholly unprepared for the tech and its rapid acceleration.”

“Yeah, I think you mentioned that before dozing off.”

“I’m surprised we didn’t lay waste to the world with nukes in the last century. We had no code of behavior then, no codes of mutual conduct, and no agreements that could have stopped self-annihilation with any certainty.”

“DNA code?”

“No, no.” Becky placed her half-finished bowl of soup on the table.

“You can eat more than that! After all my hard work making it?”

They both laughed.

“Maybe I’m repeating because the thought bothers me so much, even when I’m not long for the world. Humans never could agree on a single thing. Not a religious thing. Not an irreligious thing. We couldn’t agree on the simplest covenant that must occur for a sentient species to avoid self-annihilation, that we should extend humanity’s time on Earth. Or that we should limit our pleasures and indulgences. Or that we should share our riches and moderate our gross inequities and imbalances.”

“Well, okay. Getting a little deep for my tired brain tonight.”

“I was thinking.” She leaned back on the couch and pulled the comforter over her shoulders. “When did it start to go wrong, especially in the United States? That nation started with such promise and hope. An ethical base and expected standards of behavior, even. I know it wasn’t perfect, but so many in oppressed places looked up to it for so long.”

“The Debacle didn’t help things, now, did it?”

Becky shook her head slowly, entranced by the memory. “It started in the decades before the Debacle. A few deeper thoughts on the topic. The political parties couldn’t get along with each other. They started tearing down norms and replacing them with nothing, nothing at all. Only animosity and an untethered mandate to win at all costs. How to one-up, gain, overcome, overpower, control. Cohesion was lost. Fair play was lost. Cheating, hating, name calling, backstabbing, deceit, cowardice. Unwillingness to stand up for good things, despite your party’s objections.”

“That’s politics, little sister.”

“Rationalizing wicked means to achieve a presumed end. They got their presumed ends, for sure, but it was not even close to what they envisioned. Those who danced around the fires of fascism finally got thrown into those same fires, except for the few survivors who call themselves demigods now. May the souls of those loathsome politicians forever roam the frigid granite halls of purgatory.”

“Dearie, you understand I deal with politics all the time at the office. Politics of the worst kind. It’s simply the lay of the land and will never go back to a better state, as if there ever was such a thing. People don’t change much in time. We’re barely removed from caves.”

“Oh, no,” Becky countered, shaking her head. “People made overt choices to behave poorly, to treat each other badly and unfairly, and there was no stopping. I don’t want to sound like it was organized religion’s fault, although it was in a way. At least religion provided some ethical construct for people and helped them understand basic principles of how to build a lasting society. But religion gave up or got corrupted and became too self-righteous and exclusive, I don’t know.”

“I suppose you’re right. And I was just starting to take an interest in your tattered book over there,” Sara laughed.

“That book is not about religion, Sara. Religion is a social organization of people built around specific belief systems, so it is therefore exclusive and self-entitled by virtue of that. What religion does not attempt to crowd-source new converts in order to gain confidence of the righteousness in its own belief constructs? What religion does not say, ‘Your beliefs are wrong. You must believe mine to be right?’ As much as I respect my religious friends, this was why I could never join them. I’m too individualistic and could not accept teachings about the world that were misaligned with what my own inner senses told me.”

“I never had any attraction to it at all,” Sara admitted.

“What you read is an ancient book about God. Certain concepts like self-awareness, balance, fair treatment of others, and generosity remain as truths across the centuries. Maybe I emphasize this point because I read a history of the courts last week. How they became so grossly imbalanced. It was unlike the Executive branch where you might get one corrupt President in play, then people would puke and install a less-corrupt one, then back to a madman populist. At least that cycling of viewpoints allowed for some balance. But the courts had no such balancing mechanism.”

“Not getting you, Sis,” Sara pleaded. “You moved too fast, from religion to law in one breath.”

“The story pointed out the present-day fallacy of lifetime appointments for key judges in an era of anti-aging tech. It noted a group of ultra-conservatives who pushed their lifetime candidates forward while the progressives were too ignorant or lazy to do the same. And what happened? Courts got levered, then became terminally imbalanced and distorted.”

She stopped for a breath. “They selectively used original Constitutional writings and related papers, attempting to recreate the state of mind of the framers, then made their rulings on that basis. They thought it was possible to come into that task with innocent, unbiased minds and exit the task with the purest visions. What hubris, not recognizing their own innate biases corrupted the presumed purity of their interpretations. And they continued this despite the massive technological changes underway. Unable to change with the times, the courts became effectively irrelevant and proxies for the oligarchs.”

“Sorry. I still don’t see why this is important.”

“Yeah, my mind is not as clear as it used to be. The point is this. They were scared and didn’t want to change. They argued they could decipher what the framers were thinking from these ancient writings, then apply them to twenty-second century life. It’s as if the framers were godheads in a sense, with unique wizardry of mind. Can you imagine a James Madison in the menagerie of humanity today?”

“You mean one of the early Presidents?”

“Yes. Would he write the same things as three hundred years ago? I mean, fuck, the courts gave corporations equivalency to humans with full knowledge that such entities would forever retain a superior set of privileges and power over humanity. They then extended those privileges to intelligent systems, not being able to determine which AI might or might not be sentient. Which processors in the cloud servers should get to vote? And how would old James handle a transgenic hybrid? Do you give someone with a big dose of dog’s DNA the same rights as an original human? Or the bonobo with gray matter enhancements? What about a mech tied to multiple AIs, or an AI that has self-replicated a million times over? How many votes does that thing get?”

Sara nodded her head and laughed. “This conversation is why I stay clear of philosophical things. It makes my head spin.”

“People hold onto transient and regressive things, not because they’re useful and purposeful in today’s world, but because they’re dutiful children. They don’t want to do the hard work of thinking for themselves, considering all the factors of today’s realities, and taking a chance they might be proven wrong. So, they subjugate their minds to human godheads like your buddy Ron. It’s a form of idol worship, of aging text worship, of deifying long-dead humans. Shit, I could find a hundred parallels, including my churchgoing friends who grasp for ancient interpretations all the time, particularly those who spread their doomsday dung about the end of times like they were fertilizing the field to plant weeds.”

Sara knew Becky was repeating some of the dialogue they had before her nap, but she didn’t want to remind her. “Oh, you hit a good spot for me. You know I love those cohorts. They are so susceptible to our narratives.”

“Wait, wait, Sis. I’m one of those, but in a different way. We have been given all the tools to survive. We now have in our possession everything we need to thrive in the long-term as a species. The end of times is only an ancient prophesy. So, I’ll tell you my prophesy. It’s that we are too stupid, shortsighted, fearful, anxious, and entitled. I could go on with the adjectives, but I’m boring you. Consider those who came before us, like the fuckheads who pooh-poohed global warming. Now look at the mess it has become. Those many monsters who set us up for this world we have today, and even we ourselves are guilty. And despite those miscreants having misdirected our future, we still aren’t yet dead as a race.”

“I should hope not!”

“We have it all in our hands, our choice, right now. Survive, even thrive, or self-annihilate? Do we cast aside the apocalyptic prophesies, or do we self-fulfill them? That is our choice. But our record as a species that intelligently plans for its future is nonexistent. I am without hope.”

“Dearie, maybe it’s because you’re sick, so our future appears less hopeful.”

“I lost my faith in humanity years ago, before the cancer. Maybe it’s that Stoic realist in me.”

Sara took a deep breath. Although she felt disengaged with the conversation’s sentimental leanings, she wanted to put on a good face for her sister knowing this might be one of their last.

“Are we sinking lower into the pit?” Sara questioned. “Maybe so. I must admit that we have far more easier ways to eliminate mankind and everything else from the face of the planet than we did a few decades back.”

“To my point. We have no mutual ethical construct to carry us forward as a viable species through time. We’re cloistered in our own disparate belief systems, encapsulated within comfortable bundles of social networks and self-confirming content sources. I don’t care whether it is Catholic or Hindu, liberal or conservative, human or hybrid. We live in fear of the other, the different. Our fear keeps us separate, and separate makes us exceedingly fragile. Your cohorts live in crystal fishbowls of self-reflection along with a million other fishbowls in the house of humanity. One day, that house will be shaken and all will shatter on the naked Earth.”

Sara was worried Becky was getting too worked up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it saps me of energy to ponder this again. No worries, though. Just a few more words. Look at humanity’s reign. We had our time. It came and went. We screwed our future with malice aforethought, and the race is nearing its conclusion. I don’t know how it will happen, but gut tells me it’s coming soon. In an odd and perhaps fortunate twist of fate, I will not be around to see the end. I imagine it will be much like the last Debacle, only completely effective this time. Nuke, biologic, nano, mechanical, natural, or AI-driven. Perhaps all those at once. Who knows or cares? Closing on that positive thought, how about I let you get ready for bed?”

“No,” Sara countered. “I need to let you get ready for bed.”

“Wait, though. One final word. I am tired of the simpletons.”

“Simpletons?”

“Yeah, the scumbags unable to make judgments or decisions by using reasoning, fair investigation, or insight. Evil is subtle, complex, dispersed. Most religious books and beliefs envision a Great Deceiver as if it is a singular being, readily identifiable and obvious. But does the Deceiver arrive as one singular person? As one lying, corrupt, and amoral political demon? No, the Deceiver can be many, many hundreds or thousands of demagogues and blowhard tyrants. It can come as religious zealots who support those purveyors of evil. It can come as one of your media moguls who works to advance his wealth while amplifying the worst in humanity and tearing apart its binding glue and norms. It can come as a team of enablers who blindly administer or adjudicate rules and regulations to favor the few and suppress the many. The Deceiver is not an evil thing, not a being of any kind. That’s far too easy and apparent. No, it’s a self-created malaise. It’s a camouflaged cancer that humanity allows and encourages to exist in plain sight as it rots away our core of goodness, kindness, caring, consideration, and empathy.”

“Please, hon, don’t speak of cancer. Nothing in you is evil.”

“Just a convenient corollary, Sis.”

Becky studied the minor wrinkles on Sara’s forehead and laughed. “I don’t know how you do it. You’re three years older than me but look thirty years younger. Guess that anti-aging tech really works!”

“I’d like to say it’s natural, but then I’d be lying. Of course, you could be here too. The offer is always open, as your sister has the best medical industry connections.”

“I’m sure you do. I’ve bored you to tears, but I can’t tell you how much it means that you came to see me.”

“Don’t do this, please!” Sara pleaded, wiping a tear from her eye. “I am flying back here as soon as I can. Hopefully, a few weeks.”

Sara hugged her frail sister, more tears dropping from her eyes. She began to sob openly.

“There, there, Sis. We’ll see each other before you leave, and I’m sure I can hang on until your next visit."