Short Story: The Influencers

Hmm...I've not received the $5 to write a new non-book blog post today, as I did yesterday, but did receive free coffee to post something today. What to do? Post something I wrote a while ago, of course. Someone at a writing blog I follow suggested a short story...reminding me that I free-associated at that site, last year, the opening scene of a short story submitted to a science fiction contest whose theme was "Blue Sky."

Of course it didn't win the grand prize. These things tend to be funded by left-wingers; reality-based sf tends not to win...apart, of course, from the flaws in the story: it starts with a bit of a gross-out, it meanders through the elected official's seemingly unconnected encounters with different "influencers," it doesn't get into many levels of PAC-funded "influencing," and the aspect of it that's based on reality is sort of depressing.

Nevertheless I think it's worth posting if only for copyright retention purposes.

It needs an introduction, for some local lurkers who might feel themselves at a bit of a loss even in Rush Limbaugh's Rio Linda...The points of this story are:

(1) This story is set in the same hypothetical future, about thirty years before another science fiction story I wrote called "Kylene Has Two Children." Old Great-Aunt Briana doesn't belong to my generation; she belongs to The Nephews' generation. The suinovirus that's going around in this story is the plague that's thinned the population of Baltimore in the earlier story. The virus is a mutation that occurred in response to genetic modifications in hogs. The human population is at risk, and the economy is depressed, because of overcrowding.

(2) People are burning their own organic waste at home for fuel. That's not the problem. (Yes, when you burn cats' waste products they release a rich, savory, almost barbecued-meat-like odor, presumably from all the animal fat that smells so disgusting when it's decomposing in the litter box.) It's not just that old people are cooking over trash fires and maintaining their own roads by hand--in the reality of the story, that's become normal. It's that even the future Governor's great-aunt is doing that.

(3) Too many cars on the road are still a problem, in terms of pollution, traffic, and safety.

(4) The standard of living in the United States is lower. "Nzinga's Mealie Hut" is not just a food fad that's fictional because it's not real; Americans really are eating fewer hamburgers and more bowls of cornmeal mush. (And is there a real Nzinga, the way there was a real Wendy? Who cares?)

(5) In real life, when I've seen a good cause--school choice--defeat bureaucratic/corporate interests in the legislature, the process did involve a fine human being dying far too young. Virginia was leaning toward school choice before David Peters' accidental death, but the law that was signed, later that summer, could almost have been called "David's Law." So that's how the process works with passenger insurance in the story. Of course I'd like to see Virginia mandate passenger insurance and encourage car pooling just because congested traffic kills people and a lot of Virginians really are getting too old to drive. I would like that, and I would also like for you to send me a million dollars.

Now the story:

The Influencers

1

“Joel,” Matt hollered, “only two people live up there and I’d bet neither of them’s even at home.”

“Looks like great footage,” Joel said, turning the campaignmobile onto the back road.

“If you damage this car...” Matt let his voice trail off as a wheel ground up over a stone, but the bottom didn’t scrape, as he’d expected. Further ahead he saw another small pile of flat pebbles directly below another big rock. The dirt-and-gravel road had washed badly after the last heavy rain, but at least somebody had been working to minimize the damage. Maybe, if they’d expected a campaign stop, they would even have paid for a few bags of cement, he thought.

The sight of his Great-Aunt Briana was a bit of a shock. Not that she looked bad for her age, considering...but Matt remembered her as a tall woman. The woman who carefully straightened up from where she’d been bending over the road, carefully arranging small flat pebbles below yet another jagged stone, had lost three or four inches, mostly from the shoulders and neck.

“Matthew Farnham,” she said, “what’s the idea of driving that thing on this road?”

“Told you,” Matt said, nudging Bill.

“I see you know the Emerald Party candidate for Governor,” Bill shouted, aiming the camera. “Could we take that as an indication of your vote?”

“Bill, you...!” Matt waved his hand to block the camera.

“You could,” his great-aunt relieved his discomfort, “even though I usually vote Viridian. Now...”

"You're welcome to come up for dinner," she said, "if you can take the time to park that thing and walk."

Did they have the time? How old was Briana? Would she invite Matt to dinner again? Matt nodded.

"Something smells good," Joel said, eyes on Matt.

"Hah," said Briana. She straightened slowly, and her first few steps were stiff. Then she was marching briskly up the long hill, setting the young men a good pace.

"Slow down," said Matt, eyes on the camera on Joel's shoulder. "We've spent most of the summer in the capitol."

"They still have that nice gym I saw when I was up there?" said Briana, scoring a point.

"What is that delicious aroma?" said Joel.

"I hope you like vegetarian jambalaya, which is what's in the pot..." Briana sounded as if she were suppressing a giggle. "As much as you seem to like...dung."

"Oh, then it must be the jambalaya I'm smelling," said Joel.

Briana turned to face him. Drawing herself up to her full remaining 5'7" she said, "The jambalaya is all covered up in an iron pot, down in the pit. What you're smelling is the smoke from the fire. I used some paper and wood to get it going, but most of what's burning under the pot is dung. Mostly cat."

"Would you like to turn back now?" Matt looked at Joel.

"I'm all right, thanks." Joel recognized a challenge when he heard one.

They walked past yet another ditch below a stone jutting up in the road, filled in with more small flat whitish stones. Above it they saw the source of the flat stones: another big jutting rock practically shone white in the light,its surface rough and glossy rather than smooth and gray.

"Lewis," Briana said to Matt in a deprecating tone.

"He did that for you?" Matt knew he was missing something.

"He didn't ask me before he brought out the sledgehammer and started bashing at it. If he'd asked me I would've told him to leave it. So he must've run into it, or been afraid he would. So his eyes are getting worse. And his blood pressure's no better. He left all that gravel where it fell."

They turned off the main road and into a front yard of knee-high red clover.

"Does grass not grow here?" asked Joel.

"Grass sprouts in between the plants every spring," said Briana. "I dig it up until the flowers grow tall enough to shade it out."

Turning sharply to the side,she poked a stick onto a pit of smoldering ashes. At least, Joel noticed, what she pushed off the top of the cooking pot--beneath the fine white ash on top--still had the shapes of twigs, dry leaves, and paper. The pot rested on a scrap of metal, which rested on a bed of hot coals. Briana used the stick to lift out the pot by its handles.

"Driving everywhere is bad for people's blood pressure," Briana philosophized, resting the pot on a tree stump. From a bin on her front porch she took a stack of cardboard cartons. "I hope you have time to wait, Matt; Lewis will want to talk with you too. Why don't you sit down and tell me what you plan to do, as governor, to reduce the number of motor vehicles on the road."

Matt closed his eyes, bowed his head, and formally blessed the hands that prepared his carton of jambalaya before he tried to answer. Briana gave him a little more time, saying, "I use my spoon, and Lewis carries his spoon in his truck; these plastic ones are for company. Bottled drinks, too. Cola, peach tea, lemon-lime, or bottled water?"

Joel made sure to get some footage of Matt ogling his bottle of "Fresh Hills Filtered Spring Water from the Fresh Hills Municipal Water Supply," even reading the label aloud for the convenience of blind news viewers, before slowly savoring a long drink from the bottle.

Then, since nobody had taken the opportunity to change the subject, he said, "Well, I'm sure you've noticed if you've been in the city lately that the number of motor vehicles on the road is dropping every year. Money is so tight, and so many people in the cities are catching this suinovirus thing...I hadn't been campaigning on the idea of breaking the automobile industry down any further. You realize that even twenty years ago, the idea of an eighty-year-old American woman having to cook on a dung fire..."

"Oh, 'having to'!" Briana almost snorted. "Y'might try 'wanting to' keep the place clean without paying any water or gas or electric bills. I'd been wanting to do that for years before I moved back here. How long can we go on dumping what nature intended us to burn? How long, for that matter, can we go on burning coal?"

"Y'might thank the electric company for keeping a few jobs open for the young men," Matt said. But he didn't expect to see her again during his term as governor, if he won, so he said, "I suppose you have a plan to reduce the number of motor vehicles on the road."

"And robot cars," Briana nodded, "and incompetent drivers who can't afford robot cars, and ordinary people who don't get out of the way in time. Like me. I know you were wondering what happened to me. An incompetent driver did. I was actually sitting at a table in Nzinga's Mealie Hut, y'know, on the mall, right in front of the window. I heard a sound like a gunshot. I saw someone stand up brandishing a pistol. And then it hit me, the car literally hit me. Next thing I knew I was lying in a pile of broken glass and hot Mealie Meals. Let's just say it shouldn't happen to anyone else. I spent only two nights in the hospital but I was wheelchair-bound for months. When I could walk and work out again,  my bones were starting to crumble. So I thought of a plan. And it doesn't have to cost a penny! In fact it'd boost revenues for a year or two."

"Have you got it written down somewhere?"

"Two words," she said triumphantly. "Car pools."

"That's been tried, for longer than we've been alive. People like driving their own cars...if they can afford cars." He thought of the olden days when, according to contemporary videos at least, it wasn't uncommon for even high school kids to own cars. Well, most people still did own cars; some people lived in them; but actually driving them anywhere was a splurge.

"Do they really?" Briana beamed. "What if you eliminated single-user insurance discounts? Everybody who drives is paying insurance on every seat, whether there's a body sitting in it or not. Five'll get you ten you'll not see an empty car seat on the road, in a year or two."

"And most people will still want to keep a car just in case they need one..." Joel's wife sold insurance. "I like it."

"That's my plan," Briana said. "I've seen yours in the mail, but if you want some footage you're welcome to tell me more about it."

Matt had discussed expanding the recycling scheme that seemed to be serving his district so well, and was getting into the fine points of a corporate bid to reopen a hospital when a cat squeaked and ran across the yard. Five cats had been quietly watching them eat. This one walked toward the road, looked back at Briana, and seemed to "meow" silently.

"Lewis?" said Briana.

Another silent "meow."

Joel stared at Briana, who explained, "The cats can hear his truck before we can. If you're ready to go when he stops for his lunch, he'll take you back to your car."

Joel folded his carton around his rice. "Nice cats," he said. He did not, in fact, like cats; he was glad they hadn't tried to join the people on the porch.

"They've learned to wait for their share of a meal," she said. "Behave nicely, get treat. If only humans could learn that."

2

In view of the amount the Consolidated American Motor Company, ToyoHondaZuki, and Beemvobenz Ltd donated to his campaign fund, Matt decided not to mention reducing the number of motor vehicles on the road.

"Seventy-four verified voter e-mails," a student reported to Matt one afternoon when he and Joel were editing the next "Govlog" video.

"Any happy voters out there?" Matt quirked an eyebrow at the student. Students usually liked the way Matt, who was forty-nine years old, looked like someone who might be in one of their classes.

"Do you ever get messages from that aunt of yours?" Joel wondered.

"Not as many as I used to get. She says she's learned to trust me."

"I'll bet she doesn't say that often. But reducing the cars on the road? Nothing about that?"

"Make me feel guilty." Matt grinned. "I don't expect she will. She's pretty realistic about things. It's bad enough for the car people that people are buying all these 'Wheels' gadgets."

"My wife gave me one for my birthday," Joel admitted. "I wondered whether it would be appropriate to ride it to work."

Matt looked out the window. Three Wheels passed, one rider pedalling, one coasting, and one sitting on the storage bench, while one car rolled out of a parking slot and down the road. "Might appeal to the younger voters."

3

"Brenda, you lucky girl!" Dinah squealed for her. "A full scholarship and five thou a month and a company car, and it's a sleek car, too! Wait'll you take it in, right?"

"I'm honored," Brenda Farnham said slowly. "I...thank you very much, Mr. Hrbovic. I think I'd better talk to my parents before I take the job, if that's all right."

Back in the dorm Dinah overheard enough to explain her roommate's cool reaction. "I think Beemvobenz wants to own a piece of Daddy."

"They already do!" Her mother's voice crackled out of the phone. "Take the job, baby! Get those other companies bidding on pieces of us. Your Daddy has a shot at the top! Don't you like Washington?"

"Mother, have you seen Washington on the news lately? Like they're packing in the urns by dozens in reopened graves there. So, no, I don't want Daddy to be there."

"The plague, right...that'll be over before Daddy's term ends," Helen Barry Farnham said optimistically. "You take that job. You've got three hundred thousand in student loans to pay off. You see how much you can do with that five thousand a month. When the company starts sending out bills, your little friends will be living on peanut butter sandwiches, and you ought to be able to pay the whole quarter-million by return mail."

"Is Dad there? Could I talk with him?"

"He had a meeting. He'll probably be late. But you take that job! I saw the offer on video, and, baby, you do a lot for the look of that car."

4

Brenda Farnham, Physics Princess, usually wore her tiara while driving; anything that helped keep those thick ashwood-colored curls out of her face was good. She had spent a whole day shopping for sunglasses that fitted her nose, didn't strain her eyes, and curved harmoniously around her cheekbones. Meticulous about driving as about other things, she wore cotton lace mesh mitts to keep her hands from sweating on the steering wheel.

She would have felt a lot more comfortable if they'd given her time to travel between schools by Wheels, but she did enjoy the actual school tours. Brenda liked young children and loved it when they swarmed onto her knees while she read aloud from The Phantom Tollbooth or Cars. She sincerely admired their model aircraft; she loved handing out the cheap little books and model-design apps with which the Princessmobile was stocked. On the highways, she tried to hold on to the emotional feelings of those things.

After idling for several minutes, then hearing from the speakerphone that the traffic stalled ahead of her was not expected to move forward for another twenty minutes, Brenda carefully avoided watching the flash video of the injured driver the shearbots were digging out of the wrecked car. She closed her eyes and relived the feeling of the tiny five-year-old crawling from her knees up into the back of her chair, carefully smoothing her hair with hands hardly bigger than her dog's paws.

She did not hear the crash. By the time the shearbots worked their way back to her, Brenda was watching the blood clot on her left arm, feeling the pain as tissues puffed around the broken bone, not feeling anything in her toes, and aware that that had been the closest encounter she was likely to have with a child for a long time.

5

"I still can't wiggle my toes," Brenda Farnham told her father. Paparazzi swarmed in the corridor behind him and her mother, whose fixed faint smile showed no pleasure or amusement.

"Don't try," Governor Farnham said. "The doctor thinks you might be able to walk again if you can give your back time to recover."

"How...much...time?"

Matt Farnham had anticipated this question and sensed, amidst his anguish, that an accurate answer just might make him famous. "Brenda, the children at four hundred and seventy-two primary schools are sending you electronic cards--almost every one in every class--and this doctor reckons you're going to have time to watch all of them."

Brenda's eyes closed.

"Baby, don't take it that way," Helen said. "Take it like a princess'cos that's what you are. Still. We discussed that with Hrbovic. You're going to be like the Sleeping Beauty Princess--if you're willing to be. Beemvobenz is offering you a hand-controlled camera you can turn on when you're ready, they're calling the Princess Cam, and you can wave and smile and encourage those children every time one of'em gets a good grade. Con Am has offered to pay off your college loans if you'll do just one little video where you say something like 'American robot cars are programmed to stop short of a crash.'"

"They said the robot's programming had shorted out anyway," Brenda muttered.

"And ToyoHondaZuki is building you a robot dog to fetch and carry things. They want video of it bringing you a bunch of grapes and carrying back a plate with the twigs and seeds, but they say it's built to do bedpans."

6

Brenda was a thoroughbred and a half, Matt told his Great-Aunt Briana on the phone that night. "Not one word about what a kid that age thinks about bedpans. You'd be proud of her."

"I am," said Briana. "Ask her if she wants the farm."

7

The worn-out car, a Hyundai, "self-steering with user override," belonged to a survivor of post-traumatic stress in Afghanistan. His name was Wayne Ratcliff and he'd been on so many different medications for so long that nobody cared to guess at what point he'd become insane. He admitted he'd been watching videos while the worn-out computer system steered his car along the highway, and when an old movie called Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, had come on he'd recognized it as a message from the Universe to guide the rest of his life. He had overridden the self-steering function and gunned his car toward the shoulder of the highway, regardless of the three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. From now on his rule was to take nothing from nobody, to get what he wanted regardless of the cost. If a store overcharged him he'd wreck the place, too, and if his landlord carried out that threat of evicting him from the basement flat he rented, merely because he'd not bothered to pay the rent for a few months, well sixteen months actually, he'd kill the landlord and maybe blow up the building.

"You know he's not guilty," Joel said, "by reason of insanity."

"I know he's intelligent enough to be counting on that loophole," Matt said.

He had never really considered the arguments against keeping the violently insane alive.

That the sentencing of Wayne Ratcliff was some judge's job, and not his, pleased Matt. That budgeting concerns were stirring up questions about the traditional sentencing practice, that year, exacerbated his family's suffering. Some of the Viridian Party, a strong minority, were circulating charts showing how much money the state could save by ceasing to feed the violently insane. Some of the Emerald Party felt the same way but party leaders, never inclined to let a good dichotomy go to waste, stressed the humanitarian motif.

"A message about forgiveness..." a party spokesman babbled. Matt looked out the window. The only unfamiliar car parked outside was a Honda.

"Make one yourself," Matt said.

"If we could get one from Brenda..."

"Out!" Matt said.

Nevertheless Brenda inevitably saw at least one of the podcasts calling on her to make a video calling for Ratcliff's pardon. Her response was to make a video calling for pardon for a sixth grade boy who had built a guided missile that really exploded a small smoke bomb in the principal's office, instead. She also spliced old images of herself, pre-crash, into some fourth grade girls' music video about the periodic table of the elements.

8

Meanwhile a blogger whose screen name was Mortimer Snerd, and whose blog ranked 927th out of 1,924,938 blogs known to have been active for five years or longer, posted:

"I Remember Wayne Ratliff.

Remember he never wanted to be in a car pool. He spouted b*s* about his car being his best friend. If challenged he'd say that actually he saved a lot on insurance not sharing his car, which people would believe, and the truth was, don't ask me how I know, but I know, he frequently lost control of his body functions and was afraid he'd be thrown out for fouling somebody else's car.

Remember he used to hate small animals, cats groundhogs possums turtles and especially small yappy dogs like one that bit him on the leg once, he said, and he used to like to run over them. He had a game going on his Facebook page, gave points. 50 points for a cat, 100 for a dog, 25 for a deer or rabbit, 10 for a squirrel possum groundhog snake or turtle. Points were supposed to add up to money but he gave that up when someone was due to cash out.

Remember he used to pick real serious fights about his sexual identity. He was bi but he said homo-hetero wasn't the important thing, sadistic-masochistic was. He said anyone who claimed to be neither sadistic nor masochistic was b*s*ing, and he was Saying it Out & Loud, he was Sadistic & Proud, and if people didn't know which they were he would take them home and clarify their sexual identity for them. He clarified Fred Spofford's identity such that Spofford died the next day and the family didn't want to know exactly why, so the obituary just said misadventure. Bobby Hall died within a week also and Gillian Leonard committed suicide.

Remember he used to go off his meds and talk out of his head, fairly often when young as he disliked the way the meds affected his sex life, but he never seemed violent, just crazy. Worst thing he did when off his pills was lose jobs. He got a job as a city bus driver in Atlanta for a while, then went off his meds and told a lot of people who claimed they weren't even talking on the bus to leave the bus because their indecent behavior was a public nuisance. When management spoke to him about this he said one old lady had stripped off all her clothes, sprouted wings, and started flying up and down the bus, bumping against the ceiling and spitting etc. on other passengers' heads. So they just told him not to come back to work there again, please, and that was the end of it.

Remember he later decided his sex life was over, with or without meds, so was taking his pills every day, but he talked a lot about lying about how he lost the bus driver job in Atlanta, getting another bus driver job, and driving a bus into deep water, a cliff, another bus, etc., so as to take the maximum number of people with him.

I think he meant to do that if he were to lose control of his body while driving the bus."

A Viridian news site reported that someone had shown the story to Wayne Ratliff, in prison, and he'd said it was true.

During the next week the hashtag #SoloDriversAreRatliff trended as high as thirty-fifth on several social media.

During the week after that, an old woman who'd been famous merely for being a millionnaire's daughter (in the days when millionnaires were really rich) announced that she wanted to marry Wayne Ratliff. A housing project whose waiting list had had five times as many names on it as the project had flats, two years ago, became and remained tenantless due to suinovirus. Sales figures indicated that 60% of the population now owned Wheels. A survey of Wheels owners indicated that as many as 80% still owned either a traditional car or a robot car, but seldom used it; of these, 90% gave "expense" as a primary reason.

9

When the Princess Cam hadn't worked for eighteen days Matt called the hospital. The nurse warned him that Briana was "resting," then showed him a video. Her eyes were closed, her pale face haggard, a dilated vein in her temple pounding the way it used to do when she played soccer. 

"What's the matter with her?"

"I don't know! Nobody knows! Some little infection going around, you know. It's flu season."

"Nobody gets the flu like that when they're twenty-one!" Matt ended the call quickly, not wanting to say the word "suinovirus."

Two days later, the doctor who called to report that Brenda was conscious, resting, and rehydrating said the word. "We don't know that it's incurable, or that some young people may not be resistant. She has a good chance, if anyone has. She was healthy as a kid could be."

10

At four o'clock in the morning Brenda Farnham woke herself up by dancing in a dream, singing along with the refrain, "Bop, bop, yeah, yeah." She felt twenty-one years old. She felt like eating three sausage biscuits with a half-gallon of her trademark blend of real orange juice and highly caffeinated citrus soda, like riding her Wheels back to that town two hundred miles away where she'd discovered that marvellous collection of real books in the library, and like dancing all night with--oh, anybody would do. She'd never been really partial to any of her admirers yet.

She remembered having been awake for minutes at a time during what must have been two or three days. She remembered having the thought, "I should drink that pineapple juice now," and shaking the little cup, and lying back to rest before opening the cup, and then waking up an hour or two later, for most of one day before she'd found the energy to drink the juice. She remembered having found the energy to tuck a few cups of juice into the little drawer before anyone tidied them away. She opened the drawer and chugged pineapple, then orange, and then mango-cranberry juice.

Then she called her parents.

"Brenda...oh, Brenda, baby, how are you?" her mother said sleepily. "You know it's not five o'clock in the morning yet?"

"Sorry," Brenda said, grinning, "I feel too much better to care! I feel fine, grand, and groovy! Is the video on? How do I look? Should I activate the Princess Cam?"

"You look wonderful!" her father said sleepily.

"You might want to wash your hair and put on some makeup before you activate the Princess Cam," said her mother. "Oh, Brenda, it's good to hear from you."

Brenda talked to her parents at length, getting a good news briefing. The election had been held; Matt Farnham had won the popular vote. Her roommate had been accepted by Harvard. Her dog had whined more lately than her parents could remember it doing in all its fourteen years.

The breakfast she was offered consisted of little bowls of fruit in juice, and little cups of juice. Brenda inhaled it. She insisted on being wheeled into the shower, washing her hair, and sitting up while it dried. She felt dizzy, sitting up in the wheelchair, but it passed; she felt quite sure she could stand up if they'd let her. She sat up in the wheelchair, catching up with news and podcasts, while her long thick hair dried. When the nurse brought her makeup kit, she highlighted her facial features for the camera and activated the Princess Cam.

"I feel fine, grand, and groovy!" she told her fans around the state. "It's great to be back on the same level of reality where youall are! I've missed you!"

The names of her child fans came back to her mind, not every single one, but dozens. She greeted the ones she remembered best.

"And, Docia," she said, "I watched your mother's podcast, and I totally agree with her. Y'know that driver that rammed into my car was obviously a case of homicidal insanity, but we still have hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of people dying every year because car parts or robot cars' computers wear out,because drivers are tired or distracted, sometimes because drivers just aren't paying attention. Y'know the day before I landed in this hospital, I had seen on the news where a woman knew something was wrong with her car and didn't want to drive, but her supervisor wanted her to come to the office, so she got into this car with a worn-out sensor and a worn-out tire, and she said she was like yanking on the steering wheel as hard as she could, but the car kept rolling right over this man in a wheelchair. Hey! I'm in a wheelchair! Well, I mean, that's pretty heavy! And she was like, 'I so wanted not to do this. I would so much rather have been able to ride in the back of someone else's car, the way some people used to do in the olden days? Only nobody I know had passenger insurance.' And I just wanted to tell you, Docia, I think your mother is so right to say that all vehicle insurance policies should have passenger insurance! My Daddy, Governor Farnham, knows how I feel!"

Brenda talked on, saying all the things her fans had been waiting to see and hear her say for three weeks.

11

"Obviously she was still a little bit delirious," Hrbovic observed over $280 tureens of chicken soup.

"D'you ever think about this chicken soup thing?" Matt Farnham tried to change the subject. "Chicken used to be cheaper than pork. But chickens are lovable. I mean, they'd eat us if we happened to be helpless and have open wounds, and they'll eat each other, but some people say they're capable of forming emotional bonds and becoming pets. So now our farmers can't market chicken meat without forty different certifications that the birds were fed on health food and tucked into bed at night with a bedtime story. Hogs are dirty, ugly, and mean. Nobody cares about them. So you can still buy a pound of pork for less than ten dollars."

Hrbovic refused to defer to the Governor's change of subject. "Well, we can't have the Physics Princess babbling about passenger insurance."

Matt was known for his boyish grin and good humor, but during his three years in private law practice he'd perfected a look that had scared more than one criminal into confessing. He gave Hrbovic that look. "You can discuss that with her when she's back in school. Not before."

12

"Brenda wanted to see you," Matt told his Great-Aunt Briana. "They can't guarantee when or whether she'll be conscious again, but that day she was up and talking, she said..."

"But you can't be in the room with her," the nurse said. "Not with suinovirus."

"Whatever protection you wear, I can wear," Briana snapped. "There's been no confirmed case of a vegetarian coming down with that disease. In any case I am now eighty-three years old. I have a right to live as dangerously as I choose."

"But she's not likely to be conscious enough to know you're there! The virus is destroying her heart."

"Hah!" said Briana, and she sat down beside Brenda's bed and ordered yarn and a pair of knitting needles. During the next ninety-four hours she left Brenda's bed for brief meal and bathroom breaks, only; for six hours each night she slept in the visitor chair, and for most of eighteen hours each day she knitted. An aide commenting on her "crocheting" was informed, "You're quite right; I normally do crochet, which is why I'm knitting, now, as a meditative anchor."

"Don't you think it's more important for her own mother to be there?" Helen asked on the phone.

"She can talk to you on the Princess Cam," Briana rasped. "You're too young to live dangerously, and you're not a vegetarian."

13

Keeping the Princess Cam window open on his phone, Matt opened another tab and checked the state legislature's web site. Five House Bills and four Senate Bills mentioned mandatory passenger insurance. All five were sponsored by Viridians. Matt sighed. For those of his constituents who took party loyalty seriously, it was best to wait until at least two Emeralds had expressed support for a bill.

The Princess Cam came on for the last time. "Matthew?" Briana said. "She's gone."

He threw his phone against the window. It bounced. He picked it up, snapped the cover and battery back into place, and punched out a few messages to a few state legislators he knew personally.

Later, when they were alone at home, he and Helen cried.

14

After Helen died, too, of suinovirus, Matt later remembered having been told that his feeling about Helen not having been allowed to sit by Brenda's bed had become an illness. He was offered medicine. He took it. He didn't sign any bills into law, pardon any criminals, or preside over any events, for several months of his first term as governor. He barely even watched the news, on which, among other things, an ever-decreasing body of medical researchers reported the discovery that suinovirus was not airborne at all; it was transmitted directly to humans from pork.

"You had it yourself," a doctor told him."That was probably why you felt the grief so much."

"Really? Thanks for giving me antidepressants instead of antivirals!"

"But there's no antiviral drug that works on suinovirus."

Mandatory passenger insurance, he learned later, had been disputed for a few weeks before it became popular bipartisan legislation. His official signature, when he felt fit to read and sign bills, was a formality.

Briana nursed their cousin Lewis, and several other people, through the suinovirus plague before "really retiring" for the last time.