AND OUR FLAG WAS NOT
THERE:
Shots that Have Been Fired Part One
New York City, American Commonwealth, 2125 AD
Jackelyn rowed her boat languidly down the canal of lower Manhattan, sticking to the slow lane closest to the walkways that pedestrians waltzed down. The smell wasn't pleasant given the heat, those who overly romanticized canal cities like New York and London hadn't smelled the inevitable trash and vermin being baked by the hot summer sun. Even a city with a well-organized government couldn't keep the stink away. And New York City did not have a well-organized government.
Congress was in deadlock down in Philadelphia…again. The Alliance Party was trying to form a coalition government with the DSA…again. How many times had that happened over the past twenty years? Too many. How many times had there been a war scare with the Hasidics in the Adirondacks over shipping down the St. Lawrence? Too many. How many times had Mohawk politicians in the state government in Albany been caught running guns to their fellows to wage the low-level war in the Burnt Over District? Too many. How many times had the government tried to clear the squatters in the Pine Barrens over the last fifty years? She knew the answer.
So the canals stank and it took common New Yorkers to try and fight the smell. Most people in this city seemed more concerned with masking it in their houses and or on their person than fixing the problem.
All thoughts she had plenty of times before,
how rote she thought as she tied her boat to the small dock in front of the tea house and climbed the stairs to the patio, being greeted with a wave by Gustav, Jessie, and Bree. Gustav was a tall blonde and blue-eyed Finn who looked like he walked out of some European propaganda poster from the Atlantic War. He was clean shaven as was the fashion at the moment with mustaches and mutton chops now passe amidst the wave of Antebellum nostalgia. Everyone seemed to want to look like a time traveler from the 2100s in garishly bright-but-modest clothes. Nudists were scoffed at once more, did they think it was the 2060s?
Jessie was a photo negative of Gustav in some ways. Short, skin black as she liked her tea, strong South Indian features that turned heads when the group had been to Iceland. Bree was short, skinny as a rake, and bright red as only an Irishwoman in hot and sunny NYC could be. Your typical group of wannabe-intellectual New Yorkers in other words. Sticking if only because, in possessing Jackelyn with her mixed-Italian-Dominican look and fashionably bald head, they all had accents from outside the city.
New York still attracted immigrants but it wasn't a city of immigrants like it once was. It had settled down into a "normal" city rather than a hub of global finance and trade. The Second Deluge of the 2070s had finished off lingering finance in the city as upper class neighborhoods were abandoned to refugees from Lower Manhattan and across the Northeast.
Jackelyn shook Gustav's hand as she sat down, "any word on negotiations?" She started.
Gustav shook his head, "nope. And that's a no to any negotiations you could conceive of. Congress hasn't budged, Albany hasn't moved, the Sanhedrin in Menachem is wagging their guns at river traffic, and the meetings in Iceland aren't doing anything but eating their way through the mutton stocks."
Jackelyn shook her head, "no I meant your negotiation with Victor Tru."
Gustav turned red, "he's a cocksucker."
"That'd be news to his fans." Bree said, looking up from her book.
Gustav rolled his eyes, "I mean he's an unpleasant individual damn. Thinks he shits gold just because he wrote a few songs that were moderately successful."
Jackelyn sighed, "we need Victor Tru to endorse the Alliance. He's a non-partisan figure, that's what we don't have right now."
"Oh Christ who gives a shit." Jessie said, rolling her eyes. "The Alliance aren't getting a majority in the next election when half the voters think Coldstone should be hanged for treason for negotiating with the Europeans."
Bree didn't look up as she flipped a page, "still our job. Can't live on essays about how we should all eat acorns for a living and live naked in the woods like a bunch of Cascadians."
"As opposed to writing philosophical treatises about why we should roleplay as Americans from the 1820s." Jessie retorted.
Now Bree looked annoyed, "I said we should start acting like a continental republic instead of trying to project power around the globe as some vain ideological project that wastes an already dwindling treasury. Do you know how much money we owe to the Tasmanians? We are at the verge of a fiscal apocalypse!" She emphasized her point by slapping the table with her book, some collection of Melville it looked like.
"Why are you looking so far into the future anyways?" Gustav said, "there won't be a need to pay the Tasmanians when their island is as empty as Calgary."
"Oh don't start the natalist argument again," Jackelyn said as she sat down at the table with Bree and Jessie, "don't you dare get Jessie started."
"European nonsense." Jessie stated bluntly.
Gustav sat down, "you deny the population is declining? Even in your precious Cascadia?"
Bree held up her hand to bid Gustav close his mouth, "the population is declining but it's just because people can sense energy is more expensive. It's like how mice will start eating their own young when food supplies decline. Malthusian catastrophe was a myth, people are self-regulating."
Jessie cleared her throat, "can we focus? We need to get Tru elected…"
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Joshua Thorne looked up at Bernie Sanders on the stage and caught his breath.
Where the fuck am I? Who am I? What is this shit?
Slowly his memories came back. He was Joshua Thorne, ex-LAPD, he was here to…
KILL KIL KILL KILLL KIL KILL KILL KILL KILL KIL KILLLLLLL
Oh that's right I'm here to kill…he looked up at the old man on the stage…
that guy…what's his name again?
It didn't matter he had a job to do…but wait why had he been seeing that lady? Why was there all this information in his head about dates and events? It all seemed much too busy.
Wait why am I killing…this guy. The guy on stage?
He tried to remember even as he vaguely realized people were yelling at him.
There was a man at the bar…he put something in my drink when we were grousing about the mud races…
KILL KILLL KILLLL KILLLLLLLLLL KILLLLLLL
Oh wait I simply must kill him. He remembered feeling relief at the cessation of his free will.
So Joshua Thorne lifted his gun and barely noticed the horrified faces around him…
Hold on wait, he thought,
the future…do my action lead to all that commie bullshit all over America, perhaps…I should put down my gun and in this moment not shooting the red kike will actually further the goals of the white-
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
Joshua blinked and suddenly his shots had taken place and the red bastard was slumping to the floor, Thorne swore his last words were something like "my steak!" Amusing. But regardless of how amusing it was the man was dead, a security guard was dead Joshua was hosing the crowd with more shots, then he was on the ground, tackled.
Huh, he thought,
guess I didn't have a choi-
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
John Shang took a rip from his bong on the pvc couch with his friend Vance Drake.
"Dude the world fucking sucks man." Shang said as he put the bong down on the slightly sticky glass coffee table.
Drake whined as he leaned his head back, "no shiiiiiittt dawg."
"I just wish people would like…stop being such lazy retards all the time man." John said as pulled a singular snapped nylon band out of a hole in his shorts like a monk beating a single bell to channel a state of mind.
"People are too fucking lazy man." Drake said, laying a hand on Shang's shoulder.
"How do you get people to be less lazy?" Shang said.
Drake shrugged, "I dunno, if things got worse maybe they would be less lazy?"
Shang sighed, "that kind of leads to a fucked up mindset where you hope things will get better if they worse though right?"
Drake looked up at Shang, "yeah, but I mean, we aren't doing anything so what does it matter? It's all purely hypothetical, me and you aren't changing the outcome."
Shang nodded, "seems kind of corrosive to the soul though right? To watch every bad thing and hope it makes people act? Then eventually you get to the point where you hope bad things are worse so maybe this new thing will make people act when its fully possible that we live in a world where people are just like, living through shitter circumstances without ever acting in the way you imagine they would in your fantasy world where like, everyone gets woke and has some kind of frickin' psychic revelation of what must be done?"
Drake stared at him, "wow. That's crazy dawg. Wow. You know you have really pretty eyes?"
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Jackelyn was on the ground.
Wait, why am I on the ground? She thought reasonably.
She lifted her head and saw the patio of the teahouse was in a smoking ruin.
Oh, she thought with a sort of calm beyond calm,
those are my guts outside my body. Curious. They shouldn't do that.
She craned her head and saw Gustav unconscious, but breathing, with a wound on his head to one side of her, and to her other side she Bree very dead with a chunk of metal railing in her neck.
Jackelyn leaned her head back, felt the desire to say something and-
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Joshua Thorne opened his eyes and was in a white void.
Ah, heaven, he thought.
Out of an area of the void ahead of him some form seemed to congeal slowly, Joshua guessed it was an angel but it looked quite ugly and abstract. He had expected a white man or a suitably busty woman.
Instead it looked like a octopus, blindingly white, covered in a coat of downy feathers, with a ring of golden eyes around its head, small wings between its tentacles which didn't seem to have a consistent number, and in one of the tentacles facing Joshua there was a tablet of semi-translucent green emerald.
NAME.
The…angel? Said.
Joshua mumbled, "ah…Joshua…Thorne…your uh…majesty."
The angel moved to the right in a fluid fashion as a form began to take shape, a woman, bald like a dyke and looked kind of like spic.
"Who the fuck you calling a dyke spic bitch?" The woman said as she turned to Joshua.
"Wh-What?" Joshua said?
ALL THOUGHTS ARE WORDS HERE. BE CONSIDERATE TO FELLOW PASSENGERS.
The…angel? Seemed to say in such a way where clearly no noise had been made.
The…angel? Then slid past Joshua to his left as some china boy seemed to form out of the vapor.
"What the fuck?" The china boy said.
"Who the fuck you calling a boy bitch?" The chinaman said to Josh.
"Oh goddamnit, why can they hear my thoughts in heaven?" Josh said purposefully now. "And why are
they here?"
NOT HEAVEN. STOPPING PLACE. ANCIENT RIGHTS INVOKED. STORYTELLERS REAP HARVEST BEFORE SORTITION.
"Wh-what?" The woman said.
NAME.
The…angel? Said as it slid in front of her.
"Uh…Jacklyn?" She said.
CAUSE OF DEATH.
The woman seemed thoughtful, "A bomb…I think."
"I'm pretty sure I died from having a stroke from getting too horny." The-
"If you call me a China-something one more time I'm going to knock the fuck out of you dog." Shang said.
"This is a demonic trick!" Josh cried.
NO. ALL POSSESS IMPORTANCE TO NARRATIVE ARC.
Shang sniffed, "the fuck did I do?"
DRAKE VANCE IS IMPORTANT. YOUR DEATH MAKES HIM INVOKE THE RITUAL OF THE KILLING OF THE FAWN.
"Damn man, sounds heavy." Shang said.
Jackelyn sighed, "What'd I do?"
YOUR DEATH CAUSES WAR.
Josh held up his hand, "uh…you highness, what did I do?"
YOU WERE THERE.
"OK so I did a good job?"
YOU ARE MOST LIKELY GOING TO HELL.
"What!? For killing that damn bolshevik bast-"
NO. THE SECURITY GUARD.
"Oh that makes sens- wait no it doesn't the security guard was Mexican I think."
WHAT?
"He didn't have a soul I mean. Because he was brown."
ALL HUMANS HAVE SOULS.
Joshua stepped back, "Oh no."
"Dude I was standing next to you, I'm not white." Shang said.
"Oh this is very bad." Joshua mumbled.
"Jesus Christ," Jackelyn said, "where the fuck am I going?"
THE LAND OF INFINITE MISTS.
"What is that?" She said.
THE LAND OF INFINITE MISTS.
"Fuck." She said.
"Where am I going?" Shang said.
REINCARNATION.
"That sounds alright." Shang said with a shrug.
"That's not fair! He gets to reincarnate just because he's Asian!?" Joshua cried.
DATA TABULATED. SESSION ENDED.
"But-" Joshua began before he smelt the rotting flesh…
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ferenc held his grandchild in his arms as he turned to his third daughter, Joan. "She's a strong little bugger."
Joan nodded smiling, "she gets it from her dad."
Ferenc raised an eyebrow, "and her grandpa…and grandmama." He added belatedly as he looked over at Terrence leaning against a corner.
Joan nodded, "you don't have to worry about her not knowing how to make her way in the world."
Ferenc shook his head. "World's a more confusing place every day."
"We aren't atomic ash, we're lucky." Terrence said with a shrug.
Ferenc looked down at the small pink child. "I used to wonder what life was for…if it was for my work or some task. Everything I've done…"
He looked around at his kids and his beautiful wife… "was just for this."
