Rather than risk Seth coming home, I drove to a parking lot in Rock Creek Park, set the kinetic sensor on the dashboard to capture my movements, and lowered my headset over my eyes. After booting up, I entered my avatar through the anonymizing app, bouncing my IP address across the globe, and then input the code for the portal to the Slapdish worlde. I found myself sitting on a windswept cliff, supposedly seaside rural Ireland, a boiling red sun setting on the horizon. Sitting in a rough circle, from my left, were Ned Stark; Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley from the Alien films, her flamethrower sizzling by her side; a cartoon version of Donald Trump as Donald Duck with no pants and ketchup stains all over his shirt and tie; Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich; Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde from the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs; and, suspiciously, the wheelchair-bound Slapdish comedienne Henny. Of course, I was still Shane Battier. We all stared at one another for a moment. Donald Duck Trump let loose a burst of wild-horse laughter and said:
“I never use this shit—God, this is so stupid!”
“VR revolution, here we come,” said Ned Stark. “It’ll change everything, they said.”
“Your avatar is deeply disturbing,” said Mr. Blonde to Donald Duck Trump, whose avatar featured not just the cartoon beak under the infamous blond nest of hair but also splotchy and prolifically diseased genitals. A micro-penis and testicles flopping all too realistically.
“Are we safe to take these down?” Ellen Ripley scratched her face and the whole flamethrower appeared to wag at her nose.
“Oh my God, please,” said Henny. One by one, we lowered our avatars, though I will continue using most of the pseudonyms here. It turned out I knew all these people.
Ned Stark I’ve already described as much as I dare. Ellen Ripley turned out to be a man I knew quite well from the legislative battles of 2028–2030, and with whom I used to trek to a slushie cart near Capitol Hill and muse in the summer’s hottest days. We were collegial, if not friends. Donald Duck Trump was his partner, a woman with whom you’re intimately familiar from her years in the limelight. Erin Brockovich and Mr. Blonde were part of the same organization, though I knew Erin Brockovich to have quit after Donald Duck Trump’s dismissal. Finally, Henny’s rabid visage dissolved into the face of Seth Young, my partner and cohabitant.
Laughing, Ned Stark said: “This cloak-and-dagger shit isn’t for the chickenhearted, huh?”
Others were laughing as well. I was not. I glared at Seth, who gave me an uncertain smile. I’d seen a similar smile in 2030 when he flew Haniya and Peter down for my birthday to surprise me. He was not thrown by my presence now, which meant he’d known I would be here. He was somehow a part of this. Whatever this was. It was difficult to tell what his face contained, though, because no matter how advanced the graphics become, virtual reality remains enmeshed in the uncanny valley, human faces mimicking the tics of flesh but never arriving there completely.
There was no mistaking the joyful expression of Donald Duck Trump. “A real-life Wild Bunch we’ve assembled here, amiright?”
We had a prior relationship, Donald Duck Trump and I, less amicable than these others. I found her an irritation and a distraction, adept at procuring media coverage but with no scientific background and little interest in legislative processes. We’d argued on several occasions during the drafting of PRIRA because she seemed born of her own peculiar and mutinous logic.
Only Mr. Blonde looked as suspicious and disconcerted as I felt, and I was relieved when he spoke up, using Donald Duck Trump’s real name: “[Donald Duck Trump], maybe you want to tell us what we’re all doing here. [Erin Brockovich] jerks me around for six months, and this shit is not what I agreed to.”
Said Donald Duck Trump: “Can’t we just enjoy the surreality a second, man? We’re in the future!”
“There’s nothing to enjoy,” Mr. Blonde retorted. “I’m lying to the woman I love to be here. Now get to the fucking point.”
The laughter in the VR worlde faded. Though I had a distaste for Mr. Blonde during the battle over the legislation, I felt buoyed by his no-nonsense demand. Sounds of wind and water crashing against the cliffs below filled my ears, yet everyone’s hair remained still. Donald Duck Trump nodded and said:
“That’s fair. Let’s do it like this then: I’ll explain what we’re up to, then we can decide if we’re all mad cultists about to drink poison together.” She smiled and reached a hand into her head of hair and gave a quick, thoughtful scratch. Ellen Ripley chewed his nails and spit the shards out with the tip of his tongue. He looked unhappy. She went on. “We sitting here are the wreckage of PRIRA. Or PRIRA’s mutation and passage as this draconian Patriot Act we’re all seeing now. I don’t need to tell any of you about the tipping points we’re blowing past. Arctic sea ice loss, coral bleaching, the city of Los Angeles burns to the ground and no one bats an eye. A cyclone turns Mumbai into a water-logged graveyard and it’s still business as usual. The entire eastern half of the US, from Iowa to New York, is inundated. Thousands killed, billions in property damage, a homelessness crisis in every city, another economic downturn, and what are we all looking at? A presidential race practically rigged for a guy bought and paid for by the carbon lobby.
“A decade of work, we line it all up, we have a bill sitting there at the fucking doorstep of passage, and then the whole thing goes up in flames faster than Hollywood.” She shook her head in theatrical sorrow. “Global emissions have yet to peak. One and a half degrees is already here, according to most measurements. Two degrees is a guarantee, no matter what we do. Is three even avoidable anymore? Shit, I don’t need to preach. And maybe this is our fault. We didn’t understand how hard they would fight, who they would finance, what kinds of strings they would pull to hold on to power. Hell, they’re basically feeding guns and money to an internal rebellion of white nationalists and calling on them to guard their infrastructure. So. We need to do something. And we need to do something drastic.”
She nodded to Erin Brockovich, who made a few keyboard motions with her fingers and a hologram appeared in the center of our circle, a few feet above the lazily whipping digital grass. It was the pop singer Zeden. I did not understand.
“For the past couple years, I’ve been thinking about all that old bullshit of why I’m doing this and how can I possibly give up, and boy, do I want to give up. Feeling sorry for myself a lot. And it occurred to me, one of the primary things that has kept people from understanding the danger of what’s going on is that we’re all isolated, right? So we need to create radical solidarity. People are yearning to get back in the game, for some kind of path to participatory action. So we’re going to give it to them. All at once—”
Interrupted Mr. Blonde: “I’m sorry. Not that I don’t love your pontification—really brings me back to the old days—but I’d love to know, straightforward as a fucking spear to the eye, what the fuck is going on.”
Mr. Blonde was making motions with his hands, and I recognized this as his habit of chewing tobacco. I’d seen him twist open many a can of Copenhagen Long Cut Straight in front of legislators who found it disgusting. He now took a pinch into his mouth.
I spoke up then: “I would second this sentiment.”
“He speaks,” said Seth. I ignored him.
Said Donald Duck Trump: “It’s pretty simple, really. [Erin Brockovich] and I have an idea, and we need a few trustworthy people to pull it all off. That’s why you are all here. For over a year, we talked about who else we wanted to bring in on the ground floor. The seven people here represent the ground floor.”