The ovation overwhelms. It is a surge of passion, exploding from a crowd that has just been informed that the world as they know it will be gone within their lifetimes.
BACK IN WASHINGTON, MORRIS AND I MEET AT THE REFLECTING pond near the Lincoln Memorial and wander down its length. It’s a brisk winter day, and Morris’s cheeks are a healthy fuchsia from the cold. I ask if she’s trepidatious about this profile.
“Obviously. But there’s a reason I decided to quit fighting celebrity. Not embrace it, but at least use it. And if I somehow came to believe that posing nekked for Penthouse would help, I’d drop trou right here.”
She stops to laugh. A burnt-orange leaf parachutes down from a tree and lands on her shoulder. She plucks it off and shares her laughter with it. “During Covid, Matt got me to watch that old show Friday Night Lights. I was like, ‘Football melodrama? Fuck off.’ But of course, I got hooked, and I think it sort of made me fall in love with him even harder. I still watch certain episodes when I want a good cry.” She twirls the leaf by the stem. “There’s this scene where Coach Taylor goes to Saracen, the QB, in the fourth quarter of the state championship and Coach says to him, ‘Son, have you got one more in you?’ And Saracen just gives him this earnest-as-hell look and goes, ‘I always got one more in me, Coach.’ And goddamn, for whatever reason, that scene moves me.” She slips the leaf into the pocket of her peacoat, and we continue walking. I tell her I don’t quite get it.
“What I mean is, I’ve got my eyes wide fucking open. Maybe our notions of liberty and democracy are fictions built on exploitation, and we just happen to have lucked into the moment of the greatest plunder and consumption and called it freedom. But I really do believe what we have here…” She searches for the words. “We have the two most consequential experiments in the history of humankind. The first is the uncontrolled dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We know how that ends. But the second is an experiment in human community. In democracy and organization and compassion and our willingness and ability to confront this emergency, arm in arm, together.”
She stops at the edge of the reflecting pool. Her gaze fixes on the Washington Monument, pointing drab and gray to the overcast sky.
“That’s why we need to keep adapting, keep switching tactics, and if those tactics don’t work, switch them again. We can’t be in denial about what’s going on—this is a last stand for our world. But who would have thought a last stand could be so much fun? Or just so beautiful.”
M
AGIC
M
OUNTAIN
2027
On his way to the World Economic Forum, Tony got lost in the muck.
A meter of snow had fallen on Davos the week before, followed by a warm snap. The temperature rose to nearly thirteen degrees Celsius while the city’s street cleaners worked round the clock to truck snow from the streets and dump it in Lake Davos, but the whole alpine city was still soaked with slush and meltwater. His panel wasn’t until the next day, but he wanted to sit in on some of the others, particularly his friend Marty Rathbone’s. Marty was discussing macroeconomic trends with the CEO of Google and the EU’s chief economist. Limo tires sluiced and pedestrians flattened themselves against quaint Swiss brick to avoid the spray. Nestled among four snow-coated mountains in postcard perfection, the picturesque town looked rotten. Like it was moldering.
He found his way when he spotted the protestors: five hundred people held behind a fence, signs declaring every manner of grievance, justified or conspiratorial. One young woman held a sign that read GANGSTERS PARTY IN DAVOS. Another, OFF WITH THEIR FUCKING HEADS. Following near-riots after the last NATO summit and the G-20, most of Europe had imposed severe restrictions on protestors, herding them into little pop-up concentration camps for the afternoon where they could be tear-gassed if someone shook their fist too hard at a cop. As he shuffled through redundant checkpoints, barbed-wired barricades, FaceRec scanners, and a quick Covid swab lest anyone smuggle in a new variant of the troublesome virus, he eyed the Polizei. Riot gear masked every feature except cold eyes. The Davos church spire shared the skyline with all the SWAT-looking characters perched on rooftops, idling their tripod-mounted sniper rifles.
When Marty Rathbone told Tony he’d nominated him for a much-coveted invite to Davos, Tony had given him grief over “capitalism’s biggest cocktail party.” But Marty, Harvard’s star, had become a fixture, and he wanted Tony to take his show on the road. Ever since the publication of his book, Tony hadn’t had a problem hopping back on the lecture circuit. He had that odd type of celebrity: unrecognizable to the vast majority of the hoi polloi, but instantly controversial in certain circles, iconoclast or heretic depending on one’s prism.
Holly called him “our idolater father,” but he scoffed at this. He’d simply laid out some ideas based on the science, and the world could take it or leave it. His old partner in crime from Scripps, Niko, had introduced him to Marty. “You two will annoy and argue and despise each other,” he’d written. Later, Tony and Marty decided to partner on a paper. Marty was a slick academic, well aware of his brilliance, which he leveraged into book contracts, Treasury Department roles in Dem administrations, well-paying consulting gigs, and grad students’ panties. He was a financial economist and devout free marketeer, who’d read Tony’s book and come around to his own climate Cassandra conclusion. Their paper, examining the potential economic impacts of a real estate collapse on the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard, had created a stir—though mostly of denial, data nitpickery, and debunkification.
As he passed through the final security barrier of the Congress Centre, flashing his low-level white badge branding him as a member of civil society who didn’t pay upward of $100,000 to attend, Tony saw Marty’s text.
Just heard Clinton speak. That guy is looking like the Crypt Keeper!
They met in the main hall and picked at finger food from one of the many catered spreads. Tony overheard all kinds of nonsense from nearby conversations:
“India? What’s left to export? Mud and suicidal farmers?”
“I underestimated Argentina.”
“That’s Adjaye. He’s a starchitect and a real cocksucker.”
“Asteroid mining is hot, and Luxembourg is making a big play.”
Bono, looking Botoxed and pallid, went striding through the center of the room, collecting gazes, smartphone videos, and whispers.
“Shit, where’s the Edge?” said Marty, watching the short Irishman flanked by what looked like two ex-football players. Bono wasn’t the half of it. Tony had read a bit about the attendees on the flight to Zurich: Facebook’s new CEO, the director of the IMF, a performance by Coldplay, a South African novelist, a Turkish artist, and the usual interchangeable billionaire axis of Bezos, Branson, Musk. Natalie Portman was on a panel that overlapped with a speech from the Iranian president—so who knew which would be the bigger draw. The CEO of Goldman Sachs. Top executives of Lufthansa and Deutsche Bank. Rao Ling-Mosgrave, one of Slapdish’s founding wunderkinds, and the first person with a $500 billion net worth. According to the folks who kept score, the three richest people in the world now had the same wealth as the bottom half of the global population.
“You’re a real starfucker, aren’t you, Rathbone?” said Tony. “Also, is it just me or do they still barely invite any women?”
“Tell me about it,” said Marty, scanning the ass of one of the caterers. “Later, though. The after-parties are called nightcaps. The Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvédère is the big one, but last year Apple had an augmented reality party that was pretty neat. You looked around and there were all these celebs hanging out as holograms. You could walk right up to Leo and talk to him in LA.” Marty brushed a hand through his carefully parted gray and tugged at his suit. His panel was that afternoon, and he was wearing makeup. Tony had brought only the blue Brooks Brothers he wore for all weddings and funerals. “At the Tonic Piano Bar in the Hotel Europe, Norman Nate flew in this Michelin-starred chef from London and was just giving away Château Cheval Blanc and Château d’Yquem.”