***
Carlos watched the cars ferry away the last remaining workers, trying and failing to see the kid he’d pissed off. He threw the remaining tools beside the pile of brush in his truck and slammed the tailgate closed.
“Recycling center,” he said once inside. The truck’s electric engine whined his departure as the air conditioning blasted the cab.
Digging through the box beside him, he counted six extra bag lunches. One good thing when the kids faked work-details for others, Carlos got the extra lunches to take home. The other reason he didn’t mind was, nobody cared as long as the system registered that a full group had shown up.
Carlos switched the display to a news channel. The map vanished to reveal beautiful young newscasters speaking over a crawl of horrific events.
He really hadn’t meant any disrespect to the kid. Had been trying to compliment him on coming out and working so hard. He wasn’t sure why an angry, angsty kid was bothering him so much–it wasn’t like there had ever been a shortage of those throughout history–but bother him it did.
A sky washed nearly white from summer haze hung above, a few lingering contrails littering the dome. Carlos could just make out the snowless Sierras in the distance. As if reading his thoughts, the news showed Los Angeles. Angry citizens were protesting further water restrictions. As he picked through the leftover lunches, he watched trucks fire water cannons to disperse the protesters. Was there anything more absurd? Shooting people who lived in the southern California desert with water for demanding water.
He remembered, back in the twenties, when refugees first started arriving in large numbers. Forever unwilling to compromise with its gridlocked self, the U.S. agreed on only those from war-ravaged Syria. Forget the rest displaced by rising seas and consuming deserts; unless chased from their homes by bombs, Americans weren’t interested. Even then it had been difficult. No matter how much the news showed weary families craving little more than a home, every minor infraction was magnified to show scheming, plotting outsiders bent on the nation’s destruction.
As if Americans hadn’t engineered enough of their own nation’s collapse. The pot-holed road now thumping Carlos’ city-issue truck attested to that.
After dropping his load at the recycle yard, Carlos signed over the truck, grabbed his backpack full of left-over lunches–soon to be dinner–and climbed within his own ride back home, a driver-less car he’d arranged earlier.
Evening stars sparkled through the twilight as Carlos inched along Highway 80 traffic. The day’s heat had left him dozing when he should have confirmed an alternate route away from the freeway. It wasn’t until he was awake amidst the sea of other cars he realized his mistake.
Fully awake, he turned back to the news channel playing on the dash.
“State Assemblywoman Cardoza once again brought up lack of oversight and frequent defrauding of the state as a reason for her opposition to increased basic income spending.”
What followed was a litany of wrongs with the BINC system by the slim-suited assemblywoman from the Central Valley. Carlos didn’t know what work her constituents in that parched part of the state had to do besides their BINC details, but the assemblywoman seemed convinced an alternative existed.
The video cut to a clip of Cardoza. “When corruption is openly tolerated to the point of thousands of online videos praising, condoning, and instructing in the manner of faking BINC tasks, the problem isn’t isolated. It’s systemic.” Applause segued the clip back to the commentators paneling the show.
Everyone knew people defrauded the system. Had there been any system in history that hadn’t been gamed? But the numbers were miniscule. Out of thirty attendees today, only that one kid had been sneaking a masked ID. Seeking perfection in any system was foolish. The assemblywoman’s claims were as valid as razors in apples or satanic messages in music had been when Carlos was a kid. Overblown nonsense passed like a baton to the next politician looking for anything to scare voters into checking their names on the ballot.
Sure some trolls bragged about dodging work details and raking in full BINC benefits. But they were also despised by others and garnered negative online comments by the hundreds. And if it took a few months to get their benefits reduced until they returned, shamed, to their work details, then what the hell was a democracy for if not due process?
Carlos slunk down into his seat. It didn’t matter that poverty, while not eliminated in the U.S., had been removed as the lingering dread it had been when Carlos was young. No longer a gun to the nation’s head, forcing work and stress and obedience, people were finally able to afford some free time. Yet people attacked BINC as a flawed system that had replaced a better, more competitive one. Morons who’d never struggled under the old system still pined for something they’d never endured–under the pretense that they might have been rich had they not had to share with everyone else.
Carlos felt the old organizer stir within him. That invigorating energy he’d felt standing around with petitions. Studying the most non-confrontational argument techniques to win support. Anything necessary to show the opposition there existed a balanced response to outrageous claims.
He researched Assemblywoman Cardoza and found she’d planned on holding a rally. Some ice cream shop hosting an event for an organization seeking reform of California’s basic income program.
Carlos may have been old, but he was not too old to do something. There was even still time to submit his protest for political action points. Participating in government, even when protesting it, garnered BINC points toward a monthly quota. No better way to encourage an apathetic populace to action than by incentivizing it. Maybe Carlos should go and show Assemblywoman Cardoza and her friends how many people had fought for the basic income they sought to destroy.
***
Andrea Cardoza scrolled through the speech on her tablet. “The system breeds laziness and malcontent,” she read from the backseat of her tinted SUV. “I’m not sure if I like, malcontent,” she said to her assistant sitting beside her.
“Use crime,” Lee said. “Laziness and crime. It has more sting to it. And you can link it to the numbers. Here.” Statistics of BINC recipients and criminal complaints flashed to her tablet, the percentages massaged to make her point. She knew the numbers wouldn’t withstand scrutiny, but this wasn’t some interview with the risk of fact-checking. It was a simple rally.
Andrea’s political ascension had been as quick as it had been unique. An independent caucusing with the left, elected from the blood-red Central Valley, hers made for an interesting story. But it was criticism of the basic income experiment in California that had landed her interviews and an increasingly visible profile in local and even a few national venues. With her pristine, scandal-free background, she was shaping up to be the very thing her political opponents feared. There were blossoming movements to primary her for the U.S. Congress seat in the next mid-term. A path to Washington and a bright political future.
“Idle hands, fueled by constant handouts, only deepen this malaise assaulting our youth,” she said. She led into very real suicide and mental health statistics and their higher correlation to those dependent on BINC payments for the majority of their income.
“I still think we should push for full repeal,” Lee said. “Your trending skyrockets when the question is framed that way.”
“Repeal is a dead-end. I’m not going to campaign on pipe-dreams.”
He frowned but remained quiet while swiping furiously at his tablet. Andrea hadn’t completely abandoned the moderate stance that had won her such allies on both sides of California’s state assembly aisle. Especially her work negotiating state funds to upgrade almond orchards in her district from disastrously wasteful flood irrigation to drip-systems. She was proud of her achievements and worried what a national stage meant for such bi-partisanship, where compromise was seen as not simply enemy action, but unconscionable treason. The idealist wilting within her cringed at the gridlock such thinking had caused in dealing with society’s problems.
“A basic income has only exacerbated our ecological woes,” she continued. Lee’s head snapped up in shock as she spoke. “In a climate choking on over-consumption, encouraging even more in our population only grants incentive to those polluters seeking to sell goods to citizens with cash in their pockets waiting to be spent.”
“Madam Assemblywoman, Andrea, we’ve talked about this,” Lee pleaded. “No one, regardless of party, wants to hear they need to get by with less. Such suggestions will ruin your message regardless of the audience.”
“Even if it’s true?”
“Especially if it’s true.” He leaned forward while the SUV exited the freeway around a curving off-ramp. “I know how strongly you feel about such things. But if you truly want to address climate change, there’s no better way to do so than upon the national stage. A place we’ll never reach by pushing such messages now.”
True solutions demanded nuance and yet her message was to be kept as simple as possible. Was this really what she wanted? A compromise of her own values as well as ignoring the climate-change reality choking the oceans and searing the soil in order to clamber up the political garbage-chute?
“You’re probably right,” she relented. “I guess we–what the hell?”
They both turned while their driver grumbled a curse. Nearly a hundred people crowded the parking area in front of the shop, Sky Ice, where she was to give her speech. Handmade signs bobbed above the crowd. Some clever, but mostly crude designs and slogans decried Cardoza while praising basic income.
“Flash protest,” Lee said, consulting his tablet as the driver navigated the protest crowd. “Son-of-a-bitch, the organizer even managed to get it a political-action approval. These leeches are getting double their BINC percentages for participating.” There was a venom to the way he described the people that grated on Andrea. Then again, Lee hadn’t ascended to his advisory position for passing out puppies.
A few police officers stood between the two groups while a beefy security-drone rolled about, swaying as it moved on its locomotion orb. Half-a-dozen aerial drones buzzed about overhead. An older man in blue coveralls addressed the group. His gray ponytail belied the vigor allowing him to speak without a mega-phone, his voice penetrating even the SUV as they parked in a roped-off area to the side.
“They want to take from you so they can gorge themselves on the rest,” he said. The applause drained away in the open space like rain on the parched, yellowed grass surrounding them.
Andrea squinted as she stepped from the SUV into the blazing August sun. A few lingering contrails wisped high above an otherwise cloud-free sky nearly white with haze.
She was led to a podium a single step off the ground by a member of the group who’d arranged the rally-now-protest. Called Responsibility in Basic Income—an acronym they’d somehow mangled into CRIB–the group advocated for increased scrutiny on BINC payments and harsher penalties against those abusing the system. They leaned a little too far right for Andrea’s tastes, but she found herself feeling this way about most groups as her political career matured.
She was glad to see the pony-tailed man leading the protesters pause as she began her prepared speech. After the usual pleasantries thanking Sky Ice for the venue and CRIB for the invitation to speak, she launched into her speech, a mixture of praise and respect for the idea of basic income while listing the numerous abuses perpetuated under the system. She emphasized hard-working participants subsidizing those taking advantage of the system. Her measured remarks brought sporadic applause from her supporters while the protesters shouted the occasional jeer.
Eventually, taking advantage of a pause, the man in blue coveralls interjected. “How long before your suggested cuts cascade to full repeal?” This brought riotous boos from his own people.
“No one is talking about repeal,” she said.
He bullied on without allowing her longer to respond. “How long will they have to worry in the dark over piling bills that your cuts”—he consistently spat the word like a profanity—“will take money from their wallets and food from their cupboards?”
“We advocate reform,” Andrea said, cutting him off as he prepared another harangue. She’d not won her Central Valley seat by meekly folding her hands at debates. “We argue restraint and oversight while you bring only fear-mongering and scare-tactics. We look to build a better system to help the people, while you cling to corruption. Why preach fear? Do you not think them above it?” She spread her hands to the crowd behind him. “Working together we can solve these issues. Fighting amongst ourselves only deepens them.”
It was the same tactic that had won her such media attention. The lone moderate offering a constant appeal to both sides with grand words like unity and compromise. The typical political tripe contrived for the watching cameras and buzzing media drones and not for the crowd around her. And while a small part of her understood it as the betrayal it was, she used the moment to further bolster her aspirations. The lone rock calling for compromise against a swelling tide of bipartisan discontent. Such action might not win over a crowd, but it would keep her schedule filled with interview requests.
From the back a scuffle scattered parts of the crowd. Several people had surrounded a young man with black hair, screaming insults about Syria. A blonde woman beside him shouted back in defense of her companion.
A wicked thought entered Andrea’s mind. She could use such intrusive venom to sway the hesitant crowd while their leader’s spell was broken, as he too, craned his neck to see the brewing trouble.
“Need I explain the discontent caused by such oversight in the system?” She gestured to the struggling group. “We seek to sway our youth with bribes. Pockets full of cash in exchange for discipline and dreams. Are we really surprised that they demand more when we demand so little?”
As much as the idealist within wept, she basked in the scored political point, unrivaled in its molten stimulation.
“Fuck off, bitch!” The savage shout cut through the charade of civility. A chunk of cinder-block soared over the crowd, wild enough in its trajectory that all near the stage easily dodged it, but it achieved its result with instant effect. The crowd surged around the struggling group in the rear. Instant instigation fueling barely lidded emotions that had only simmered in the California sun.
“Time to go.” Lee grabbed her arm, as a uniformed cop gestured toward Andrea’s waiting SUV. The other officers stepped back while the lumbering security drone waded into the crowd. Andrea glimpsed the pony-tailed leader desperately trying to quell the violence. Her last image was of him crumbling to the asphalt as an aerial drone swooped low, crimson pepper spray misting the entire crowd.
“Whew!” Lee was positively orgasmic as they departed toward the freeway. Several patrol cars roared past, wailers shrieking as they sped toward Sky Ice. Lagging behind like an overweight friend was a massive military-surplus beast, lights flashing atop its high cab.
“What do you think?” Lee held up his tablet, their response awaiting only her approval. “More violence from those preaching tolerance” it read, beside a photo of the man who’d thrown the stone. Frozen in full, cocked-arm motion, the stone dwarfed his hand.
She’d stopped shaking. Was this how discourse died? Were some random, idiot provocateurs all that it took to derail democracy? No wonder climate change roared ahead unfazed while the world bickered over a tenth of a-part-per-million reduction. Did she add to that with her own ambitions? Delayed hopes of instituting true change on a national level while abandoning all morals and reason on a local one?
“Already getting requests for statements from local news,” Lee said. “Give me the word and I send this.”
He licked his lips, a ravenous look on his face.
Andrea closed her eyes.
“Send it.”
—
C. Spivey spent eight years as a U.S. Navy meteorologist in Europe and Asia. After studying TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) in grad school, he now teaches English as a foreign language. During his military time he saw just how beneficial government sponsored healthcare and higher education can be in building a debt-free career. It wasn’t much of a stretch to extend such a system to ideas for a universal basic income for all. His speculative fiction has appeared in S.Q. Mag, Fantasy Scroll, and Perihelion.
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