A new story I'm working on. Centered around the conflict between Gen Alpha and the Boomers, with Gen X in the middle. Chapter 1 Jaxtyn Williams surveyed his world and saw only hopelessness. The rain was falling, as it always seemed to be falling at this time of year in this part of Washington State. The rain was a lead-colored drizzle, a despairing mist that hung in the air and provided a backdrop to everything. There was no blue in the sky, only gray. The same gray as the wet streets and sidewalks that were littered with illegally dumped trash: old mattresses, broken bits of cheap furniture, used up tires, cardboard boxes that were soggy from the rain, black garbage bags of household trash. To Jaxtyn's eye, all those were monochrome gray as well. The only bright colors in this world came from the graffiti that was sprayed on everything: walls, fences, street signs, even vehicles that had been parked too long. That, and the orange cones and flashing amber lights marking out the street repairs that always seemed to get started but never seemed to get completed. With his hands shoved deep into pockets of his hand-me-down parka, Jaxtyn walked along a busy boulevard named Evergreen Way. He walked with his shoulders shrugged up and his head down. He was hunching into himself, trying to ward off the cold. The cold, like the wetness, like the gray, was everywhere. It was just another element of the hopelessness that filled Jaxtyn's world. Jaxtyn was young. He was just entering his mid-twenties. He was smart and fit, and capable. He had energy and ambition. There was no reason for a young man like Jaxtyn to feel hopeless, and yet he did. He did, and the young men around him felt the same degree of hopelessness. It was like a plague. Just like Jaxtyn, they felt they'd been born into a world that had no place for them. It assigned no value to them. It was a world that did not want them and was unafraid to say so. Hands in his pockets and his head hunched low, Jaxtyn headed for a local bar. He wanted a drink and while he'd never been to this bar before, he knew he could use his Veterans Administration benefits there. With the sun setting and casting long shadows into the gray, Jaxtyn trudged along. Cars passing on the roadway kicked up mists of spray. Many of the retail spaces he passed were closed. In some windows there were signs advertising the spaces were for lease. Other windows were simply empty, their dirty glass offered views into abandoned and dust covered businesses. These were living archeological sites, a window into what American once was, but was not now. Jaxtyn came to an intersection and stopped for the light. The metal box that housed the pedestrian button was spraypainted over in graffiti. An obstacle comprised of stolen and abandoned shopping carts blocked his path. One cart was filled with dirty diapers. Jaxtyn maneuvered past the obstacle, smashed the crosswalk button with his fist, and waited. On the corners opposite his position loomed two billboards. One advertised, "Women's Reproductive Health," and featured a young woman in a tank top, smiling broadly and standing triumphantly, arms outstretched to the heavens. The second billboard also featured a woman. This woman was older, and the advertisement was a political add. It read, "Maintain Your Right to End of Life Dignity. Re-Elect Samina Qureshi." Jaxtyn reflected on the two women. Neither looked like him. They looked happy. The light changed and the crosswalk lit up. Jaxtyn crossed the street. The bar looked like all the other businesses on the street. It looked sad. The building was covered in graffiti and should have been demolished a decade ago. The cheap exterior lights that still worked provided varying degrees of illumination. Jaxtyn didn't even know the name of the bar. The only thing that drew him to it was the sign near the front door. It read: All Forms of Public Assistance Accepted EBT/WIC/SECTION-11 SOMALIA SUNRISE FUND NORTHWEST FAMILIES COLLECTIVE EVERGREEN SMILES AFRICA HERE AND NOW AMERICA WORKS TOGETHER SUDANESE SMILES NEW AMERICAN RESOURCES And last of all: VA-4-LIFE Jaxtyn went inside the bar. The bar was a dive. The interior was dark and stale smoke hung in the air. At the insistence of certain communities, smoking laws had been reversed, and tobacco use had made a comeback in the United States. The walls were painted in a color that might have originally been blue or purple. They were decorated with memorabilia from sports teams and the free signs and posters that were delivered by beverage distributors and online gambling institutions. Like the people on the billboards outside, the sports figures and the models posing with the beer cans didn't look like Jaxtyn. They looked happy. A square wet bar filled the center of space. Along the walls were booths and tables. A few faces at the bar looked up when Jaxtyn entered. These were old faces. The faces of old men who'd given up. The faces of men who spent too much time sitting on bar stools, and would still be sitting on bar stools for years to come. They were the faces of what Jaxtyn would likely be. Jaxtyn walked deeper inside and headed towards the bar. A letter board hung above the bar and listed menu and their prices. Each item had two prices, one in green, and one in red. The green price was for the old money. The traditional US dollars. The second set of numbers, the ones in red, were for the new money, the American Prosperity Credits. The existence of two official currencies was a fact of life in Jaxtyn Williams world. The first was the standard U.S. dollar. Often called traditional dollars, greenbacks or "Greenies" for short, these were the currency notes everybody in the world was familiar with. It was the tried-and-true American dollar. Everybody knew them, everybody took them. The new currency was a bit more problematic. The American Prosperity Credit (APC) was the new currency circulated by the United States. Unlike its green predecessor, the APC came in varying shades of pink and hence were referred to as "Pinkies" or "Pink Slips." Other nicknames included "Ameros" and "Gavin Bucks." The official narrative of the United States government was that the APCs offered a variety of "user friendly features" that the legacy currency did not, and that over time they would eventually replace the old U.S. Dollars. The unofficial policy, and this was a secret to nobody who took more than a second to think about it, was to move the national debt off U.S. dollars and onto the APCs. Private debts, such as mortgages and car loans, were still transacted in legacy dollars. Understandably, banks were reluctant to take the APCs. College loans, while backed by the U.S. government, were also held in dollars. Federal taxes could be paid in dollars or APCs, but the final figure was always calculated in dollars. On the other hand, government debts such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and some government pensions were all paid out in APCs. In the simplest terms, if the U.S. government was owed money, it was paid in dollars. If the U.S. government owed money, it paid in APCs. Originally the American Propserity Credit had been named the North American Prosperity Credit and was supposed to be the North American equivalent to the Euro. Unfortunately for the United States, Canada and Mexico refused to participate in the scheme. The Caribbean nations, each with their unique banking systems, showed similar disinterest. Since no other North American countries were willing to participate, the North American Prosperity Credit was shortened to just the American Prosperity Credit. Other nations around the world showed varying degrees of official support for the new currency. But whatever their official policies, nobody wanted Ameros. Every honest economist and treasury official saw through the scheme. Nobody wanted to be holding these American Pink Slips when they were inevitably inflated into worthlessness. In the end, the APCs were only circulated domestically where American citizens were forced to use them, however reluctantly. The APCs did have one useful feature, depending on one's point of view. Each physical note was imbedded with a digital tracking mechanism. This allowed every physical APC note to be tracked at each point of exchange. Furthermore, the APCs' digital tracking system could be paired with the new digital ID system, another feature of life in Jaxtyn William's America. The U.S. government now had a digital microscope it could use to see exactly how its citizens were spending their money. As dystopian as all this was, all Jaxtyn Williams wanted was a couple of beers before heading home. He saddled up to the bar and pulled out his wallet. "What'll it be, Hon?" the bartender asked. She was a large woman, making the transition from middle-age to old. She wasn't doing it gracefully. She was exactly the kind of woman who tends a working-class bar in the late afternoon on a weekday. A couple of the barflies looked up when she spoke, then quickly turned back to their glasses of beer or their phones. Jaxtyn opened his wallet, took out his VA 4 Life benefits card and set it on the counter. The woman's face soured. Any hope she had for a nice cash tip in real dollars vanished. "Two drink maximum," she said, "That's all Uncle Sugar pays. After that you gotta pay yourself." "I know," Jaxtyn said. "And the VA only covers what's on tap. None of the good stuff." A few of the barflies looked up from the beers and screens again to watch the unfolding scene. The confrontation between the bartender and this newcomer more interesting that whatever their phones were throwing at them. "I know," Jaxtyn said. "Yeah, you know," the woman repeated. She spoke louder this time, obviously upset. More barflies looked up. The woman went on. "You gotta fill out the forms first. I can't serve you until the forms are filled out. I bet you know that too." "Yeah, I know that too," Jaxtyn said wearily. The bartended fished out a government issued tablet from under the bar. Jaxtyn waited as patiently as he could as the woman huffed about her work. The full weight of all the barflies' eyes fell upon him. Jaxtyn had been through this before. Among other things, his veteran benefits got him a two beer per day credit, paid for by the U.S. government. While that sounded fine, in order to get the credit, the U.S. government required the proprietors of the bars to fill out several pages of forms before they served any alcohol. For the veteran, it meant two free drinks. For the bars, it meant you had to do several minutes' worth of paperwork just to sell two beers that were bought on the government's credit and paid for in APCs. "They don't actually want you to use the benefit," a voice called from some dark corner of the bar. It vocalized what Jaxtyn was thinking. The bartender stopped what she was doing. The other patrons in the bar stiffened. Jaxtyn looked to see who was talking but couldn't quite see them in the darkness and gloom of the bar. The voice spoke again. "They don't really want you using the benefits," the voice said again. "The other programs don't require this kind of paperwork. EBT. WIC. Somali Sunrise. You don't fill out any forms when you use those benefits. When some immigrant wants to buy groceries with their Somalia Sunrise or New American Resources bennies, they don't have to fill out any forms. The rare times a form need to be filled out, there is a Non-Profit or NGO worker there to fill it out for them. But for the veterans, it’s a whole different program." A man emerged from out of the gloom. The man was tall with broad shoulders and a smile that seemed far too easygoing. He looked like an older, more muscular version of Jaxtyn. Slowly and with an easy gait, the man walked towards Jaxtyn. Jaxtyn noticed that many of the other patrons avoided eye contact with the man. Others watched him with signs of respect. The bartender followed this man's every move. In her eyes, Jaxtyn saw no small amount of fear. "Different sets of rules," the man said to Jaxtyn. "There are different sets of rules for different Americans. You know that too, I'm sure." Without waiting for a reply from Jaxtyn, the man turned to the bartender. "Helen, why don't you bring us a round to the booth. Put it on my tab. Bring some food over too. It's dinner time. You can finish the forms later and bring him his two drinks after." "Yes sir, Waylon," the bartender said. The man, Waylon swept out an arm indicating one of the booths along the wall. Jaxtyn looked the stranger up and down and then headed for the booth. Because they were sitting on opposites sides of the booth, it would have been easy for an outside observer to get a good look at the two men and make a comparison. Both men looked similar. The biggest difference between the two was age. Jaxtyn was in his early twenties, and still had the lean look of a young man. Waylon was in his fifties, although he'd stayed fit and age had been kind to him. Jaxtyn had the sloppy, disheveled look of a young man who hadn't any money and hadn't figured things out. Under his parka he wore athletic clothes: track pants and the ubiquitous hooded sweatshirt. On his feet were beat up athletic shoes. His look could be described as "urban disheveled." Waylon was well-dressed, but in a functional way. He wore sturdy work clothes: leather boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt underneath a canvas duck jacket that wasn't jsut a fashion statement. His clothes were clean and without any rips or rents. Waylon looked like some kind of foreman, or the owner of his own construction company. Waylon looked like what Jaxtyn might be some day. Jaxtyn looked what Waylon might have been if he'd been born a few decades later. Waylon picked up his beer, sipped, set it down and spoke. "So, you did five years in the Army? How was that, exactly? Enlistments are for four years." "I got extended one year for Venezuela Three-Point-Oh," Jaxtyn explained. "Our Combat Engineer Battalion was getting disbanded, but they needed infantry soldiers for the final phase. They retrained a bunch of us to be mortarmen, then sent us down to cover the withdrawal." "Seems like you'd have been just as useful as Combat Engineer. Maybe more useful." Jaxtyn shrugged. "I'm not going to waste my time analyzing the decisions of Big Army." "How was the withdrawal?" "About what you saw online," Jaxtyn answered. "Wasn't bad at first, but once it was clear the United States was leaving for good it went crazy. The Bolivars took to the streets and killed anybody who might have been working with the US. After that, they killed anybody who wasn't with the Bolivars. The old cartels and gangs rose up and captured all the oil infrastructure we promised Exxon and Chevron we wouldn't abandon. We mostly watched it from the other side of the fence until the very end when the bad guys figured out they could make some good ransom money by capturing US military personnel. Things got really sideways at the end." "Sounds like," Waylon said. Jaxtyn sipped his beer. "We brought a shit load of 120mm mortar rounds into the VZ. We didn't bring a single one back." Waylon didn't reply right away. He let the solemn sentiment of the young man's words hang in the air. Respect called for that. When time and gravity had cleared the air of the false dark romanticism of the men who'd died and the boy who killed them, Waylon asked. "So, you did five years. A combat tour in Venezuela. The El Paso campaign before that. Why didn't you stay in?" Jaxtyn, who'd been looking Waylon in the eye until then, dropped his gaze to the glass of beer. "I was caught in the big drawdown. I could have fought to stay in. Some did, but my heart wasn't in it. President Gavin had just put 'General Laura' in charge of the Army. She knew who she wanted in uniform and who she didn't. I didn't feel like fighting to stay in an organization that didn't want me. "After I got out of the Army, I got bored and tried to get into the National Guard. They weren't interested either." "Yeah," Waylon said. "The National Guard Standardization Act sure as hell wasn't about standardizing the guard." Passed several years earlier, The National Guard Standardization Act gave governors near absolute control over who they allowed into their state's uniformed forces. Progressive governors were quick to use this newfound authority to establish quotas based on race, gender, ethnicity and religion. It also allowed the states to screen for dangerous ideological beliefs and purge the roles of anybody the governor deemed politically unreliable. It was one of many sweeping military reforms under the Gavin administration. Waylon added, "The whole US armed forces went to hell." Helen, the bartender came by with a round tray full of food. She set plates down in front of Waylon and Jaxtyn. Cheeseburgers and fries. Jaxtyn's plate had two burgers and what had to be at least two servings of fries bordering on three. Neither man said a word again or touched their food until Helen was out of earshot. After she left, Jaxtyn looked at the mountain of food and then spoke. "This feels some kind of interview." Waylon shrugged. He grabbed a handful of fries and gobbled them down in two bites. He chewed maybe twice, swallowed and said, "We have two militaries in the United States. They look the same. They wear the same uniforms, but they're very different. "First, we have the do-stuff military. They're the ones that actually do stuff. They fly, they maintain the airplanes, they sail ships, build stuff, go overseas… fight. All that Special Operations stuff. That's the military that does stuff. The other military doesn't do stuff. It’s just a jobs program and a gateway to a lifetime of VA benefits. "I'm not one to begrudge anybody for serving, and I'm not going to judge anybody who volunteered for what they did or didn't do, but I've got no time for that second military. The first military, the one that does stuff, that's another story. People that served in that military, they've got my respect. Those people will always have value. Maybe…" Waylon picked up his cheeseburger with one hand then used it like a pointer to indicate the world around them. "Maybe the current power structures don't value people like that. Especially people with your specific demographic traits." Now Waylon made another gesture, an up and down motion with his burger indicating Jaxtyn in his entirety. "But regardless of how society at large views you, certain subsets of society will always appreciate what you have done. And what you can do." Waylon bit into his burger. It was an enormous bite. Half the burger disappeared. Waylon chewed quickly and swallowed even quicker. Jaxtyn was young, but he wasn't stupid. He knew a recruiting pitch when he heard it. He'd sat through one before, one recruiting pitch plus the endless streams of sales pitches he got from every angle in his American experience. He also knew that a recruiting pitch like this was done in a darkened booth in a dive bar for a reason. Most of all, he knew that the best way to stay out of a jackpot was to not walk into it. Watching this older man eat, Jaxtyn decided the best thing to do was change the subject. "Were you a Marine?" The older man smiled. "What makes you say that?" "I've seen Marines eat. You eat like a Marine," Jaxtyn said. The older man turned a little red in the cheeks. "I suppose you are right. But there is not such thing as 'you were a Marine.' And there is no such thing as 'I used to be a Marine.' Either you are a Marine or you aren't. And once you are a Marine that's it. You are a Marine." "Marines always say things like that." "We do," Waylon admitted. He brought his burger back up and finished it with a series of quick bites. "We say it, but it’s the same with soldiers. Soldiers may not admit it, but it’s the same. The thing you become is the thing you are, from the time you become it until the end of forever. That's especially true for soldiers like you, soldiers who count." Jaxtyn didn't know how to respond so instead he grabbed some of his fries and started eating. Waylon asked, "where are you staying?" Jaxtyn frowned at the question. Waylon knew what the answer was going to be before Jaxtyn even spoke. "I'm in a shared house over by Keeler's." "Yeah, one of those," Waylon said, understanding. "Two or three of you to a bedroom. One of those Bright Stone homes where everybody signs over a portion of their benefits and with all those confusing subsidies you never see and nobody without a Masters Degree in Social work can understand. One of those places?" Without smiling at this uncomfortable accuracy, Jaxtyn nodded once. "That's the place." Waylon grunted and gave another one of his understanding nods. "The main economic driver around here used to be building airplanes. Before that, it was lumber and the forest industry, with a fair amount of shipping tossed in. Now, the economy is all driven by government spending: subsidies and entitlements. B.A.A.M. is what the president ran on. Benefits And Assistance Maximization. In this day and age, the economic units aren't the planes we build or the trees we harvest. The economic units are you. It is all about the money the government can squeeze into you and the money all those crony capitalists and non-profits can squeeze out of you. "And it ain't just here in Washington. The whole country is like that. Hell, the whole world is like that. Remittances to Mexico that aren't taxed. Government funding to non-profits that claim to support Haiti but have never set foot outside of D.C. There's academic fraud going into Russia. Research and Development grants going into China. There was the Somali healthcare fraud that never stopped and now we've got the Sudanese fraud that's just getting started. "Shit, we even pay our enemies. We've got cash payments still going to the Taliban and the Islamists groups in Iran and Syria. We're paying Cuba twice above market for sugar we don't even need. We even send money to all your friends in Venezuela who ran you out of town and killed anybody they could put a machete too. We're just one giant money printing machine that's keeping the whole world spinning, and while everybody knows it can't go on, nobody will even let you talk about slowing it down, much less stopping it." Waylon didn't get excited during his rant. He spoke calmly and cooly. Clearly, he'd thought about all this before, and clearly he'd come to terms with the unfortunate economic realities of the United States. Jaxtyn didn't speak, but he didn't disagree. He knew about the precarious financial condition the United States was in. Even so he had more immediate concerns. Waylon was like a man in a boat, who was watching it slowly sink and trying to think of a way to stop it. Jaxtyn was a man already in the water, just trying to keep his head above the waves for one moment longer. Waylon reached into the pocket of his canvas work jacket and pulled out a small notebook. He scribbled something on a page, tore it out, and passed it over to Jaxtyn. "There's a hotel nearby. Take that to the front desk and they'll give you a room for the night. It's on me. No shared home for you tonight." Without waiting for Jaxtyn to respond Waylon stood up, drained his beer, and headed out the door. "See you around, Soldier," he called over his shoulder. He didn't look back. Jaxtyn looked at the paper. He read the name of the hotel and the address. Everything else was a series of scribbles that Jaxtyn couldn't make out. Maybe it was a code. Maybe it was just nonsense. Jaxtyn pocketed the paper. On the table there were several untouched beers. Jaxtyn came to this bar for a couple drinks and he got them. He finished his fries and burgers and when he was done with those, he finished the fries on Waylon's plate. When all was said and done, he had a full belly and a beer buzz. When he got up, Helen the bartender came over and assured him everything was taken care of. There wasn't any bill. She did take his ID, saying she needed it to finish off the forms for the VA. After only a minute or two she brought it back. Jaxtyn thanked her and was out the door and on his way. Jaxtyn made the short trek to the hotel. He handed the desk clerk the note. Jaxtyn was expecting to get laughed at. That, or worse. The clerk, who'd been busy studying his phone when Jaxtyn came in, took the note, looked it up and down, took a cursory look at Jaxtyn and then passed him a key card. After that, the clerk went back to his phone. There was no paperwork and there was nothing for Jaxtyn to sign. The clerk didn't so much as ask for his name. The hotel wasn't much, but it was better than the shared home. It was clean and quiet. Still not entirely sure what all this was about, Jaxtyn locked the door and then barricaded it with the cheap hotel furniture. After that, his head still buzzing from the beer, Jaxtyn collapsed onto the bed and drifted off to sleep in a cocoon of warmth, cleanliness and blissful silence. Not long after Jaxtyn left the bar, Helen went to clear the table. She took a few of the glasses from where Jaxtyn was sitting and dropped them into a clear plastic bag which she sealed. At closing time, she took those and a copy of Jaxtyn's ID card and tucked them into a paper bag. That paper bag she tucked into an empty space on a stack of pallets in the alleyway behind the bar. Naturally, the next morning when the bar opened, the paper bag and everything inside it was gone.
Chapter 2 The hardest thing Jaxtyn would do that week was leave the hotel room. The hotel room wasn't anything special. It was just a small room inside the very definition of a cheap hotel. Even so, it was everything his home was not: clean, quiet, orderly, a place of solitude. Jaxtyn loved it. He got the best night's sleep he'd gotten in longer than he could remember. When he woke, he showered and cleaned up in a bathroom he could, if only temporarily, call his own. After that, he just quietly sat alone in the room. He didn't scroll on his phone or turn on the tv. He just sat in silence, relishing the nothingness and dreading the moment he would have to check out. He even called the front desk and asked for a late checkout, something uncharacteristic of him, since he never liked asking anybody for anything. He was granted a temporary reprieve, but when the time came, Jaxtyn Williams gathered himself up, left the delightful isolation of the hotel, and walked home. Jaxtyn's walk home was much like his walk to the bar the day before. The streets were wet and cold. The spraypainted scrollwork of graffiti covered everything. The sidewalks were littered with trash of every description: abandoned clothing, spent vaping canisters, old furniture, shopping carts far from home. Cars trundled by, spaced nearly bumper to bumper and heading this way and that. Where were all these people going, Jaxtyn wondered. Inside the cars floated the faces of unthinking zombies, the faces of the hopeless condemned. Wherever they were going, home or work or someplace else, it wasn't any place they wanted to be. Jaxtyn came to an intersection. To the right there was another billboard. On it there were more people that didn't look like he did. They had the same artificial, stupid, happy looks on their faces. A message on the billboard read: "Unused Jewelry? Unwanted Old Coins? Exchange your unwanted gold and silver for American Prosperity Credits today. Rates Guaranteed by the U.S. Government!" Jaxtyn looked to the left. There was an empty lot there and beyond that, some woods. Inside the woods, he saw blue tarps and tents: the universal signs of a homeless camp. Jaxtyn turned right and headed up a variety of side streets until he got to his home, a shared house inside The Sanctuary Estates development. The Sanctuary Estates was built as a working-class neighborhood long ago. The homes were modest, but comfortable. As the years went by and the economy shifted more and more from private sector production to government spending, the neighborhood declined. As the neighborhood declined, people moved out. As people moved out, housing prices declined. As housing prices declined, Bright Stone came into the picture. Bright Stone was an investment company. In legal terms, it was part of the private sector. In terms of reality, Bright Stone held a symbiotic relationship with the U.S. government, so much so that congress had passed special laws governing Bright Stones financial reporting and public disclosures. Any lobbying efforts made by Bright Stone (and Bright Stone's lobbying efforts were significant) were deemed as having the potential to cause serious damage to national security and thus classified as Secret by law. Bright Stone was the definition of crony capitalism. One of Bright Stone's investment vehicles was buying up single family homes in depressed areas for the purpose of renting them out. Such was its interest in the Sanctuary Estates. Naturally, after Bright Stone owned most of the rental properties in an area, they maximized their position by raising rent rates. While Bright Stone's real estate division was busy buying up all the homes it could get its hands on, Bright Stone lobbyists were busy on Capitol Hill. They convinced lawmakers that rent prices were just too high for ordinary Americans, and Congress had to act. Congress did act and passed additional low-income rent subsidies. To avoid putting an additional burden on already harried American citizens, these subsidies were paid by the government directly to Bright Stone. To ensure that eligible citizens got into Bright Stone properties, Bright Stone maintained partnerships with all the appropriate government departments: Health and Human Services, the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development. Often, Bright Stone would lease office space from these government agencies, ensuring the Bright Stone officials and government officials literally worked side-by-side to distriubte the benefits money. It was also understood that government officials were guaranteed a job with Bright Stone should they ever choose to leave the public sector. Naturally, Bright Stone wanted to put the largest number of subsidized renters into its properties, so rather than rent by the property, Bright Stone rented by the room. As often as they could, Bright Stone put multiple renters into the same bedroom. In Jaxtyn's case, the four-bedroom townhouse he was living in housed ten young men, each at a similar point in life as Jaxtyn. That Bright Stone was the one who drove up the rents was never discussed in the public. Nor was it ever publicly discussed that Bright Stone made generous campaign contributions to the lawmakers who enacted the subsidy laws that made Bright Stone obscenely wealthy. And it was certainly never discussed that non-U.S. citizens were covered under different, and often much more generous, housing subsidy programs than what U.S. citizens could qualify for. It was never discussed publicly, but everybody knew it was true. Especially Jaxtyn. By the time he got to his front door, his shoes were soaked through. He looked down at them. It was time for them to go. It had been time for them to go for a while now. But he had no job and no money of his own for anything. Not even shoes. He looked from his wet shoes to his front door and sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was go inside. He knew what was on the other side of that door and wanted no more of it. Even so, he had nowhere else to go. He steadied himself, grabbed the doorknob, and went inside. The first things that hit Jaxtyn when he went inside were the noise and the smell. The smell was a mix of smells: scented vaping smoke, marijuana, body odor, old food and old beer, the stales smells of a space with too little ventilation and too many young men. Together, the smells blended into something so pungent as to almost be a physical wall. Like the smell, the noise was also a wall, a chaotic mix of electronic noises from music and video games, laughing, voices talking over each other. Added to the noise and the smell, most of the windows had been blacked out with heavy blankets or sheets of cardboard held in place with strips of duct tape. Everything felt moist. Jaxtyn felt his stomach turn. He felt vertigo. He closed the door behind him, sealing off his home from the rest of the world. "Hey, Jax is back!" A voice called from the darkened interior. Jaxtyn squinted. He made out a bunch of young men sitting on a couch in the living room. Some were playing video games displayed on an enormous screen mounted on the opposite wall. Others were tapping on their phones. Nobody looked up at Jaxtyn. "Where have you been, Jaxtyn? You been fuckin? You find a girl and been fuckin' all night?" Colored lights flashed through the darkness, illuminating zombie faces. Some Jaxtyn recognized as roommates. Some weren't roommates but Jaxtyn recognized them as ever-present entities. Some faces Jaxtyn didn't recognize at all. He did recognize the speaker. Kyro was where he always was, sitting on the couch and playing a first-person shooter game. "No, no girls," Jaxtyn said. "I just had to get away for a night." Kyro dropped the subject. The fairer sex was a touchy topic for these young men, who had limited prospects for jobs, limited prospects for success, and thus limited prospects for relationships. Compounding the problems was the fact that the only place people of their generation met was online. That presented additional minefields that had to be navigated. Instead of girls, Kyro asked, "Any luck with a job yesterday?" "No luck," Jaxtyn answered. "Anybody get the mail?" For a long time nobody answered. Young men with bleak eyes sat transfixed to their phones and screens. Only Kyro showed any animation, and that was because his body was responding reflexively to the game he was playing. Eventually Kyro called out, "No. I haven't checked it yet. You expecting something? Job offer?" "Naw," Jaxtyn answered. Sitting on the couch, Kyro swerved his whole body to one side, avoiding whatever threat the video game was throwing at him. "If you want, I'll connect you with my aunt. She is a disability clerk at the Medicaid office. I'm sure she can get some benefits money heading your way." Universal Basic Income wasn't a thing yet, but that didn't matter. Under the White House's B.A.A.M. policy, anybody could get some kind of government benefit.[1] Despite being young and in perfect health, Kyro was on disability. Many of the other men were too. In Jaxtyn's mind, it wasn't entirely their fault. For most young men in their cohort, qualifying for disability was easier than finding a real job. Men who looked like Jaxtyn and Kyro and the others didn't get white collar jobs, and they certainly didn't get government jobs outside of the military. They didn't get into college either and thus couldn't get the academic credentials necessary for many jobs. Jaxtyn had his GI Bill, but given that any potential student could qualify for some type of financial aid, the GI Bill wasn't much of an incentive to join the military and it certainly wasn't much of an incentive for academic institutions that benefited far more from enrolling diverse students who came with greater government subsidies, or foreign students who paid higher tuitions. The blue-collar sector wasn't much better. Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs survived the brief period they were out of vogue, and then resurged, especially under the Gavin administration. Traditional blue-collar fields had already been contracting, with manufacturing being offshored and mining, agriculture and similar jobs tempered by environmental policies. A series of executive orders further constrained blue-collar industries. Diversity quotas were levied against any small business with more than four employees. Similar diversity quotas were levied against trade schools, for both their student bodies and their faculty and staff. This was good for the trade schools, which received generous government subsidies for diverse students who never showed up to class, and diverse teachers who never left the faculty lounge. It wasn't so good for the workforce, as less plumbers, HVAC technicians and electricians were being created to meet an ever-growing demand. Most economists assured Americans that A.I. would eventually close the gap, although they never explained how an A.I. application was going to swap out a bad capacitor, solder a connection, or install a shower. And complicating everything for people like Jaxtyn was the open border policies. Not only did he have to compete against diverse Americans who received government mandated preference for hiring, he also had to compete against heavily subsidized immigrants who could work for lower wages because their basic needs were met by government assistance. Whether it was by design or simply a never-ending series of unfortunate coincidences, there was a system in place that was absolutely stacked against men like Jaxtyn. To Jaxtyn and his friends, the rigged game was obvious. The worst part of it though, worse than not having jobs, worse than not having the prospect of a future, worse than being denied a sense of belonging, the worst part of it was that while the system was clearly stacked against them, the people in power denied it. But that wasn't even the worst lie of all. The worst lie of all was the one that was constantly repeated. It was the lie that had been forced down the throat of men Jaxtyn by teachers and politicians, by sports figures and celebrities, by news casters and every corner of every of element of mainstream media for as long as they could remember. It was the lie that men like Jaxtyn held all the power. Jaxtyn looked around the modest kitchen. The garbage needed taking out. Empty bags and wrappers from fast food and home deliveries cluttered the counters. On the wall hung the same decorations as in the dive bar: swag from beer brands and online gambling companies. Jaxtyn grunted something and Kyro grunted something in response. Jaxtyn headed upstairs to his room. On the way up he passed a kid on the stairs. Jaxtyn recognized his face, but couldn't say if he lived there, or was squatting. The kid was watching porn on his phone. Jaxtyn moved past him. Neither acknowledged the other. Jaxtyn knocked on his bedroom door and waited. One of his roommates called, "Enter." Jaxtyn turned the knob and stepped inside. It was a smallish bedroom, the kind designed to house one suburban child. Jaxtyn shared it with two other young men. There were three beds inside, metal framed beds of the kind the military used to use. A single bed ran along one wall. Bunkbeds ran along the other. In one corner was a cheap desk that might have come with the beds or might have been salvaged from a dumpster somewhere. Piles of dirty clothes filled the spaces in between. One of his two roommates, Leo, was gone. Leo was frequently gone. Leo had a relationship with an older man that Jaxtyn knew enough about not to ask questions. The other roommate, Oliver, was sitting on the top bunk, legs dangling over the edge. Oliver was part Korean and part a few other things. He had a thick, black beard and was a few years younger than Jaxtyn. He was fiddling with something. Like the others, Oliver was on benefits. He was enrolled in the local community college. While an Asian man was not much higher than a white man on the spectrum of political favorability, Jaxtyn assumed Oliver leveraged his mixed race to get into school. That didn't really matter though, because Oliver never went to school. To hear Oliver tell it, his teachers never went to class so neither did he. Even so, his student benefits covered his rent and went straight to White Stone. For cash, Oliver would repair gadgets he found in the trash, or resell cigarettes, gasoline and other goods he and his brother would buy tax free on one of the local Indian reservations. "Everything okay?" Oliver asked. "Sure, why wouldn't it be?" Jaxtyn replied. Oliver shrugged. "No reason. You weren't here last night. I wondered if maybe you went into the city and joined one of the protests?" Oliver looked up from his work and smiled. The nightly political protests were an inside joke between Oliver and Jaxtyn. Every night far left youth would assemble somewhere in Seattle and hold a political protest. Because leftists held the White House and the State House in Olympia, these protestors would protest policies in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida. The political impact a screaming nineteen-year-old on the streets of Seattle would have on Reproductive Health funding in Odessa Texas was questionable. What wasn't questionable was that around midnight the protests often degenerated into riots that mostly involved smashing storefronts and looting. Like Jaxtyn, Oliver didn't think much of the protestors and thought even less of the Seattle Police who stood by every night and watched it happen, their hands in their pockets. "No, I wasn't at no protest," Jaxtyn said. "Well, where were you?" Oliver asked. "I wasn't here," Jaxtyn said as he kicked off his shoes and sent them flying into one of the clothes piles. "And I wasn't there. So, let's leave it at that." Jaxtyn collapsed into his bunk. Despite spending the night in his own, quiet hotel room, he felt tired. He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "Any luck finding a job yesterday?" Oliver asked from the top bunk. "I got an application." "Yeah," Oliver said. "Yeah, I got an application to be a paid protestor. I grabbed an application for you too." "Fuck that," Oliver swore. "If I showed up to one of those protests, I'd end up getting shot." "Yeah," Jaxtyn said. "Why do you think I grabbed one for you?" While Jaxtyn was wallowing in the mire of hopelessness that was his life, Waylon went for a drive into the country. He drove a pickup truck that was at least two decades old. Maybe three. It was a simple vehicle, with a squarish body and a minimum of electronics. It wasn't a classic, but it was vintage, and vintage offered several advantages, one of which was it didn't come with all the built in software required in modern vehicles.[2] It was also white, which meant it looked like just another white pickup/fleet vehicle operated by the countless government agencies and private institutions. Fueling the truck was expensive, but that could be mitigated by buying gas at one of the many Indian Reservations who sold fuel without charging the state's gas taxes. Waylon began his day by driving to a local scrap yard. He parked in one of the painted spots, donned a plastic hard hat and headed into the yard. On the way the owner, Harold Wong looked up from his office window. The two men nodded at each other but they didn't wave. In the yard, Waylon approached a grappler that was picking through piles of scrap metal. When the operator saw Waylon approach, he stopped what he was doing and opened his cab door. Waylon walked up, handed his phone to the operator, then turned away. The operator took the phone, put it in the pocket of his coveralls, and went back to work. He did this all as casually as if it were routine, and in fact it was. From the grappler, Waylon headed deeper into the scrap yard. Some damaged shipping containers sat in a corner, being used for storage as they were no longer road worthy. Waylon went inside one and rummaged through the shelves full of tools, spare parts, and the odds and ends that were nothing more than clutter. He found a black metal lunch box and opened it. Inside were several mylar bags. They shimmered metallically beath the container's dim lights. Waylon closed the lunch box, snapped the latches shut, and headed back to his truck. Less than a minute after that he was back on the road and headed north. After traveling almost an hour north, the urban and suburban decay disappeared. There were no more clusters of shopping carts. There was no more graffiti. There were no blue tarps of the homeless and drug-addled, no more garbage tossed along the side of the street. The landscape became more picturesque: thick evergreen forests, rolling farm fields, snowcapped mountains in the distance. Waylon kept heading north. He stayed off the freeway, with its cameras and license plate readers. He stayed on the backroads. The surveillance apparatus was less thick there. It was also less secure and often it would fall victim to "rowdy teenagers" with sledgehammers and high-power pellet guns. While the Washington State Patrol was quick to repair the cameras and readers along the interstate, the local law enforcement agencies that covered the county roads were another story. They lacked the resources to act quickly. Many also lacked the inclination. Waylon kept heading north. After another hour he headed for the interstate, got on it, and took it south for a short distance. When a sign ahead read, "Saffron Saphire Memorial Rest Stop," Waylon took the off ramp. The rest stop looked like any other rest stop anywhere in the country. Separate routes led to parking for commercial trucks and private vehicles. Waylon followed his route and parked between a four-door sedan and a decrepit van that looked like it was being used as a homeless shelter. The windows were all blocked out with sheets of cardboard and towels. Fast food trash, used syringes, and spent vaping containers covered the ground around the van. One tire was flat and the other three were near enough that it didn't matter. Waylon didn't even bother looking at the van. He'd seen so many similar sites over the years it wasn't even disgusting enough to raise an eyebrow. Instead, he turned his engine off and looked ahead, past the restroom buildings and across the lawns to the memorial for Saffron Saphire. Interlude: Saffron Saphire The legend of Saffron Saphire was composed of truths, half-truths, fabrications that supported the narrative, and perhaps most importantly, glaring omissions. It was true that Saffron Saphire was a trans person, or at least a man presenting himself as a woman. It was also true that early one morning inside a car at this rest stop, Saffron was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. It was also true that Saffron got into an altercation just before the gunshot was fired, although who started the altercation and what it was about was never fully determined. This was largely because nobody in authority wanted to know what the fight was about or who started it. Stories about Saffron's legacy might include the fact that he was a sex worker. That largely depended on who the audience was and how receptive they might be to the legitimacy of sex work. Even so, the fact that Saffron had a long criminal history with multiple arrests for prostitution was never discussed. That Saffron had a long history of soliciting Johns at the very same rest stop he died at was also not discussed. Most important of all was the fact that Saffron's criminal history included robbery and attempted robbery. Saffron had been arrested several times for robbing and attempting to rob his Johns at gunpoint. While this was true, it fell solidly into the "omissions" category. The man convicted of Saffron's murder was Rondale Washington. Technically it was true Rondale owned a firearm. He legally purchased a firearm years before, so the when the media described him as a "gun owner," they weren't exactly lying. What the media didn't report was that the police recovered Rondale's weapon from a safe in his home, not at the crime scene. The media also didn't report that Rondale's weapon wasn't used in the crime, even though they loved to show pictures of the impounded weapon and the suspect's 4473 paperwork. The weapon that had been used in the murder was recovered at the scene. It belonged to Saffron Saphire's life partner. They (it was nearly impossible to determine the sex of Saffron's partner) were a prohibited person. Prior crimes and a lengthy history of mental illness and drug abuse meant they weren't allowed to own a firearm. It was also omitted that Saffron's partner had used the same gun in a manslaughter case the year before and inexplicably, the judge had ordered the firearm returned after dismissing the charges. The man who was arrested and convicted of Saffron's murder had his own criminal history. Rondale enjoyed the company of prostitutes. Unfortunately for him, sometimes the prostitutes he engaged with weren't what they presented themselves to be. In addition to prior arrests for solicitation, the man had been arrested multiple times for assault and battery. His prior criminal history was never discussed by the media, and they never showed his picture. Instead, the media always described his as, "a middle-class, suburban man." More telling was the fact that media also described him, "reported as white." This was true. The Washington State Patrol officer who made the initial report did report the suspect as white, so again the media technically wasn't lying. But to mistake Rondale's race as white was akin to mistaking day with night. The media had no problems accurately reporting Saffron's race. Saffron had been born Jimmy Shopbell, and his parents were members of one of the local tribal nations. While the media would never report Saffron's "dead name," the never missed an opportunity to point out that Saffron was Native American. Some facts had more political currency than others. When all the truths and all the lies were finally put in the desired order, and the inconvenient facts properly omitted and the false facts properly inserted, the Saffron Saphire's narrative finally emerged. Saffron was an innocent, Native American trans-person who was murdered at a rest stop at two in the morning, by a suburban, presumably white man who was a gunowner who simply hated her for who she was. Transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and racism were Rondale's motivations. The ideas that Saffron might have tried to rob Rondale, or that Rondale might have become upset when he realized that Saffron was born Jimmy were never explored. Saffron's life was celebrated by politicians. And those politicians celebrated Saffron's life through fundraising. Once the political value of Saffron's death was realized, a non-profit foundation was established on their behalf. The non-profit's officers represented all the usual suspects: politicians and retired politicians, retired military officers with correct and outspoken political views, academia grandees, media luminaries, tech and business lords, and of course their family members. As Saffron cooled in the morgue, traditional media outlets cranked their coverage up to eleven, and the money came rolling in. Some of the funds came in from the private sector. But like everything else in America, most of the funds came in from non-profits and non-governmental organizations. Those non-profits and non-governmental organizations of course largely got their money from federal grants, which one way or another fell on the taxpayers, either through actual taxes or inflation. Like it or not, Saffron's life was celebrated by the American taxpayer. Not just the taxpayers of Washington State, but the American Taxpayer. From the coast of Maine to the West Texas oilfields, from forests in Idaho to chemical plants in Louisiana and every point in between, dollars made their way from the taxpayers to Washington D.C. to a foundation dedicated to the legacy of a man who died whoring himself out in a rest stop parking lot. Normally the funds that came into the Saffron Saphire foundation would be cleaned and shared with other progressive politicians and progressive causes, with few thoughts about Saffron. That was typically how things worked but, in this case, one of the board members of the Saffron Saphire Foundation had an original thought. The rest stop would be renamed for Saffron Saphire, but more than that, a memorial park would be built to commemorate Saffron. This wouldn't be some small memorial, with a roped off patch of lawn and a tiny obelisk. Saffron Saphire's memorial was to be something grand. A bronze statue, twelve feet tall, was cast in Saffron's likeness. The bronze came from melted down statues that commemorated lesser figures in American History: Civil War Generals, WWII heroes, former presidents, George Washington. The Saffron Saphire statue was placed on a raised platform made of marble imported from Italy. The platform was designed as a stage with the statue as the backdrop. A small amphitheater was dug around the marble platform. When all was said and done, the memorial to Saffron Saphire's life just happened to be the perfect stage for progressive politicians to launch their campaigns. The media could set up their cameras and microphones in the amphitheater, the politicians could stand on stage, and behind them stood the martyr Saffron Saphire, the Native American trans person who was murdered in cold blood by the "reported as white," suburban, middleclass, male gunowner. Once again, the taxpayer was on the hook. Because the memorial was at a rest stop, and because that rest stop was on an interstate, federal funding was secured to complete and maintain the project. The graft and corruption kept going. The celebration of unrepentant criminals kept going. And the lies never stopped. Waylon took it all through the windshield of his truck. He'd been to this rest stop many times before and contemplated everything it represented. More important than that, he contemplated the geography of the area. The rest stop was set on a plain, with mostly flat farm fields in all directions. In some spots there was the typical Western Washington vegetation that interrupted the sight lines: thick hedges of blackberry vines. Stands of Alder. The raised platform would make a pontificating politician more visible, thus extending the sight lines. There were also several elevated positions near enough to the memorial, small hills and hillocks. One small hill in particular caught Waylon's attention. It stood out to the human eye, the way a tall-masted ship stands out on a calm and empty sea. It was 800 meters away and topped with a stand of evergreen trees. It was perfect for what Waylon had planned. The right man with the right rifle could fire from that small hill and hit a man-sized target on the stage with ease. That distance was child's play for a modern sniper rifle. Such a shot was so commonplace it wouldn't even be an accomplishment. There were hills further away that would make better use of a modern weapon's range. But the opportunity Waylon was contemplating wasn't as simple as a sniper shot and a political assassination. A decent marksman could make a shot from the hills that were farther away, but Waylon was considering the abilities of law enforcement. Too far away, and they may not link the hill to the rest stop and the hypothetical sniper shot. Sniping for Law Enforcement and sniping for the military were two different games, with two entirely different frames of mine when it came to effective ranges. The sniper's location had to be identified by law enforcement. The investigation that would take place after the assassination was what the whole operation hinged on, and if the investigators didn't put two-and-two together, there wouldn't be an operation. There would be an assassination. There would be noise. But it would be only a flash in the pan. It would be much ado about nothing. Progressive politicians were a dime-a-dozen, especially in Washington State. If one died, some tech-lord's wife or daughter or niece or mistress would be ready to take their place. Local politicians were disposable. Forensic experts, especially teams of forensic experts, those were much harder to replace. In Waylon's mind the operation would unfold like this: when the upcoming campaign season kicked off, some progressive darling would make her campaign announcement from the stage at the Saffron Saphire memorial. A sniper would assassinate that candidate mid-speech from the hill less than a kilometer away. That was part I. Part II would begin when the investigators identified the hill as the sniper's hide location. Soon after that, law enforcement and forensic teams would be crawling all over that hill, collecting bullet casings and DNA, casting shoe prints and doing all the things that they did. But Waylon planned to have more than just evidence on that hill. Waylon planned to seed the hill with improvised explosive devices. Maybe a series of devices all interconnected, or maybe just one big device. When hill was full of investigators and special agents and forensic technicians the bombs would explode. The attack wouldn't just take some low-level politician off the chessboard; it would remove an entire capability from his enemies' inventory. It was a dirty trick, but it was a dirty trick Waylon had learned the hard way. He'd learned it in faraway lands, back when he was the same age as the kid he met at Helen's the night before. Jaxtyn and his generation had their forlorn hope and humiliating withdrawal. Waylon and his generation had their own. Waylon took one last look at the rest stop. Behind the seat of his truck, he kept a sketchbook and colored pencils. He could have taken pictures of the area as part of his reconnaissance, but he hadn't. Waylon was of an age where he could cross between the digital and analog worlds with ease. Instead of taking digital photographs, which would linger in some digital repository somewhere, Waylon had made sketches of the area. He'd made several sketches, covering all the important views: from the stage out, even from the hill to the stage. They weren't high art. He'd never be able to sell the sketches for money, but they were more than good enough to plan this kind of operation. And as Waylon knew, one flick of a match and the sketches were gone forever. Today, Waylon didn't need to make any more sketches. He didn't need to do any more reconnaissance on this target. He only came here to think and now that that was done, he turned the key in the ignition and drove back out onto the interstate. He had something else to think about. Waylon crossed over the interstate and headed east. He took a route that led along the edge of a valley. Pasturelands and a river passed by the open passenger side window. Triple-strand fences of rusted barbed wire. Collapsing old wooden barns. New farm buildings made of corrugated metal. Horses and cows grazing. Ancient tractors drug out to the roadside for display. Modern farm equipment that cost more than a brand new sports car. Waylon came to a sideroad that led up and out of the valley. He took it. The road rose steeply and after a mile it narrowed to one lane. After another mile the blacktop ended, and Waylon proceeded along a track of packed gravel. Another mile after that and Waylon was well above the valley. He pulled over and shut off the truck. From the center he took out a pair of binoculars. He got out of the truck and walked to the side of the road, near the precipice that fell away to the valley below. Standing there, he took a good long look. Nearly straight down from where Waylon stood was the farm property. It wasn't being used as any kind of farm now. The square flat pastures suggested the previous owners kept horses. There weren't any horses now. There weren't any animals. There were shipping containers, several shipping containers. Also present was all the equipment needed to mark out road repair: barricades with flashing amber lights, bright orange cones and bright orange barrels, metals signage stacked in haphazard lots. None of it was organized. It was all strewn about haphazardly amongst the house and the farm buildings. Arranged around the main house were several single-wide trailer homes. Waylon recognized these as a type that were purchased by or rented to the government on various contracts. Parked around the trailers in no organized fashion were a variety of vehicles. Everything from long stake-bed trucks to decrepit wrecks that were ready for the scrap yard to luxury SUVs. Waylon saw two brand new Mercedes G-Class 4x4s parked next to a box truck that was filthy with grime and graffiti. On several of the trailers hung a flag of red, green, white and black. Waylon raised his binoculars. They were large, big enough to account for the distance between his perch and the farm below. Inside a large barn on the property sat a shipping container. It was one of the smaller containers, only twenty feet long rather than the standard forty feet. It was painted a drab military green color. Waylon could see the container through the open barn doors. Using his binoculars he read the alpha-numeric code on the container, not that he needed to. He'd already memorized it. CFCU 532432. He'd been here many times before. His sketchbook contained renderings of this place too. Waylon lowered his binoculars. Down at the farmhouse, figures moved. Waylon saw somebody step from the house out onto the porch and then toss something into the yard. He presumed it was trash of some type. Kitchen waste maybe. Waylon didn't waste time thinking about that. Instead, he did some math in his head. If a shipping container measured twenty feet long, by eight feet wide, by eight and one-half feet tall, that worked out to a volume of 1,360 cubic feet. The question was, at just under four feet long, how many Canadian Army L1A1 self-loading rifles could fit inside such a container? There were a lot of variables to that question but only one real answer You could fit a lot. Waylon got back in his truck and drove back down the mountain. He headed southwest along a meandering route until he got back to the interstate. He took the onramp and headed south. After a few miles he took another exit and followed the offramp to a sprawling gas station/truck stop. It was owned and operated by one of the local Indian tribes, and because it was on tribal land, the gas wasn't taxed at Washington State rates. Thus, it was no surprise that even here, miles out in the country, the station was doing a thriving business. Avoiding taxes was always profitable in this new America. Waylon pulled into a queue and when it was his turn at the pump, he filled his tank as well as some empty jerry cans in the back. That done, he left the gas station and took the meandering backroads heading south. It was early in the evening when Waylon got back to the scrapyard. He parked his truck, went through the ritual of returning the lunch box and picking up his phone. After that he went inside the office. The owner, Mr. Wong was sitting at an art-deco desk made entirely of metal. It was heavy and looked like it had been built in the fifties. Harold Wong had recovered it from the scrap heap. All the office furniture he recovered from the scrap heap. Metal chairs, metal shelves and metal filing cabinets, all made of drab colored sheet metal. The kind of furniture that was made in federal prisons and shipped to government offices. Besides Wong's desk was a round waste basket made of sheet metal. The edges and seams were brown with rust. "A courier came by while you were out," Harold Wong said without looking up from whatever he was reading at his desk. Mr. Wong was old. Older than Waylon. The grey hairs in his beard and on his head were overcoming the black one. "Yeah," Waylon said. On one wall of the office hung a white board. Written on the white board were the daily prices of various scrap metals: heavy steel, #1 copper, #2 copper, cast aluminum, etc. The prices were all trending upward, and they'd been moving upward at a rate that didn't suggest good things for the American dollar, or the American Prosperity Credit. While contemplating the accelerating value of yellow brass, Waylon asked, "What did the courier say?" Still without looking up, Wong pointed at the round wastebasket beside his desk. Waylon walked over there and looked inside. Like Waylon, Wong could bridge the divide between digital and analogue worlds. Like Waylon, Wong understood that while digital communications had many advantages, security wasn't one of them. Analogue trade craft remained a valuable skill. Inside the waste basket was a light blue piece of paper, of the kind specifically for taking notes. Waylon reached inside and plucked it out. Four words were written on it in cursive scroll: His Story Checks Out. Waylon ripped the blue pieces of paper apart. Half he let flutter back into the garbage basket. The other half he kept. He'd throw them away in some other garbage can, in some other place. [1] Chana Joffe-Walt, National Public Radio, "Unfit for Work: The Startling rise of disability in America." Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America | Planet Money [2] U.S. Congress, H.R.1137 - No Kill Switches in Cars Act, 02/07/2025, H.R.1137 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): No Kill Switches in Cars Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
