Chapter 128

“Where were you when the nukes fell?”
—Mackenzi Noel, The Time of Fire: Book One

20 NOVEMBER 2020

I guess it’s a go to live stream our concert. This is a first. I mean, we’re being paid to perform at an event! Everyplace else we’ve performed has either been as part of the ‘learning experience’ or ‘for exposure’ or ‘for tips.’ This is a paying gig. Sophie said she negotiated a payment of $200 for each of us. Not bad.

On top of that, John came into our Advanced Photography class and announced a new class project. We’re learning live video. A lot of our class has been watching classic video productions from the ‘90s. Apparently, that was when MTV and VH1 rose in popularity with music videos. The concept has waned in the past decade or so. But yesterday, he showed us a few clips of live broadcasts instead of recorded. We watched something as plain as the daily news show and then an awards show. Then we got a tour of video mixing equipment. He plans to use three cameras and a mixing board during our performance with all students doing the work. Cool! We’re going to live stream the performance!

In order to make it all work, Cindy and I have to not only rehearse our music, but we have to perform it in front of the class so they can discuss angles, cuts, and shots. Well, that eats into the rest of our so-called free time.

The only thing is, I need some free time. Em is coming home today. She’s taking a week’s vacation to be here for her twentieth birthday and Thanksgiving. And I’m stuck in school for two more days next week before our break starts.

I need to get home.

Beca was as antsy as I was at lunch Friday. Her little butt kept bouncing on the seat at our table so much that she was shaking the food we were eating.

“Okay, so when does she get in?” I asked. “Is she going to leave after work tonight or wait until morning?”

“She’ll call after work and let me know,” Beca said. “It depends on whether she managed to get packed and how the weather looks. She said Chicago is expecting snow this weekend.” Yeah. Joan was also coming home for the Thanksgiving vacation. Our whole pod would be together again.

“I hope she gets out tonight, then,” I said, giving our littlest girlfriend a squeeze. “It’s going to be a busy weekend.”

“I know you are excited to have Emily home and I’m excited to have Joan, but let’s not forget about our other girlfriends,” Beca sighed. “We’ll have to share them.”

“You have that right,” Rachel said. “I can’t even begin to decide whose lips I want to taste first. We are still all headed to Donna’s tomorrow, right?”

“That’s kind of becoming the default location,” Desi said. “Not that I object, but we all need to be doing more around her house. And how are we handling food for Thanksgiving? I know Donna is excited to have all the pod and our families together, but it must be like fifty people. How are we paying for that?”

“We took the food budget out of our Patreon earnings,” I said. “Livy, Donna, and Nanette went out shopping last weekend to get the big things, like the turkeys. They have to thaw. Donna said we all have to help bake pies this weekend.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that the cost of our holiday should come out of your earnings,” Brittany said. “How are the rest of us contributing?”

“We’re high school juniors and seniors,” Beca said. “And one cute little sophomore.” She reached over and pinched Cindy’s reddening cheek. We’d gotten past the point of really considering her age as that much younger than the rest of us except when we could make a joke about it. “The pod parents’ group has been meeting once a month to discuss their children. Granted, Sophie, Nanette, and Donna don’t have parents in that group, but they are also represented. Mom said one of the key topics of conversation has been how the parents contribute to the support of minors within the pod. Since they all have individual responsibility for us, it’s not like they feel a need to bankroll the whole pod. But when special things come up like travel and gatherings, they created a fund to help contribute. It isn’t huge. We can’t tap into it and all take off for Paris for the weekend, but it makes up the parental contribution to our allowances.”

“That could be hard on some parents,” I said. “We aren’t all from affluent families.” I looked meaningfully at Beca and she just shrugged.

“From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs,” she sighed.

“Ah. Our budding communist,” Rachel said. “But you know, that’s something we should all take to heart. We’re a kind of family—our pod. The essence of a family is that they combine as a unit for mutual affection, protection, and provision. A family doesn’t depend on the children to put food on the table but they provide food for the children. I think the heart of being a family is communist.”

“The thing is, we also depend on each other to be honest about our needs and ability,” I said. “Even in families there’s sometimes a hierarchy of equality. The father is still likely to say, ‘My house, my rules.’ There’s a fine line between providing and dominating.” I could speak from experience on that. V1 had used that very line when dealing with my children. How idiotic of me not to recognize that our home belonged to the family and I’d set it up so that the family was a guest in my home. No wonder my children felt alienated.

By the time I got home after Cindy and I rehearsed Friday, Em was already in the kitchen helping Mom put dinner on the table. That didn’t stop her from squealing and rushing to hug me when I walked in. I needed a minute of just holding her in my arms in order to let the problems and pressures I’d been feeling dissipate into the air.

“A whole nine days off!” she said. “I don’t want to drive anything. You have to cart me around to all my social ... you know ... flitting around. You are my designated chauffeur.”

“That’s fine with me. You’ll just have to make sure you do all your flitting when I’m not in school or rehearsing.”

“Or on a date or having family time or doing chores. You know you still have responsibilities here at home, young man,” Mom lectured.

“Have I been neglecting things, Mom?” I said. I was really concerned. It seemed I was so busy at the moment that I hardly saw my family. “I didn’t mean to. I forget sometimes that I have responsibilities beyond school and music and the pod.”

“We understand that, Jakey,” Mom said. “Those are all very important and primary responsibilities. But sometimes, your little sister would like to spend time with you and we do like it when you are here for dinner with the family.”

“I’ll try to do better, Mom. Where is the little monster?”

“I’m not a monster, J. I’m right here. You haven’t looked past Em the whole time you’ve been home.” I leaned down to give Pey a hug and realized I didn’t have to lean as far as I used to. She had to be nearly as tall as Beca now.

“And where have you been looking, my favorite little monster?” I asked as I tickled her.

“At Em.” Somehow, she managed five syllables out of those two words. All three of us started giggling. Dad came into the kitchen and just put a hand on my shoulder. We all headed for the table.

“I run grain south and cotton north,” Em said as we ate and caught up. “It is one boring trip after another, day after day. And these are terminal to terminal trips. I’m not making deliveries to bases. I drop a trailer at a terminal, drive the tractor to another terminal, pick up another trailer and drive to another terminal. At least I have a decent scheduler and dispatcher. I leave Monday morning and get back Friday night. I spend four nights a week in the berth in the tractor. I’m on target to drive 150,000 miles this year.”

“That’s brutal,” I said.

“Since nearly all my driving is on the main corridor, the speed is eighty, so it’s not quite as long a day as it could be.”

“Eighty?” Dad said. “Last time I was through there it was seventy.”

“Infrastructure improvements,” Em said. “The road surface is so much better now, it’s safe to have a higher speed limit.”

“Why are the roads better?” Pey asked innocently.

“Hmm. You’re in fifth grade now, right? You should be learning about the Romans in history. The Romans were great road builders. Some Roman roads are still in use today as superhighways. You know how they did it?”

“No.”

“The same way the Egyptians built the Pyramids and the Chinese built the great wall. Slave labor. With a million slaves you can build almost anything. I bet with a million slaves you could build a space shuttle in a week.”

“Yeah, but would you want to fly in it?” I asked.

“You could have taken the management track option,” Dad said. Honestly, Dad? I didn’t think he was serious. He’d worked twenty years on an assembly line.

“And then I’d be the dispatcher telling other slaves where to go and when to be there,” Em said. “There’s another lesson for you, Pey. All the slave drivers who cracked the whips to get the roads built were just other slaves with a different job.”

“We get such different viewpoints on the service,” I said. “Aside from not being here where she wants to be, Joan’s doing exactly what she wanted to do for a career.”

“If I’d known what you know about manipulating the test, I might be in a different place right now. For the vast majority, though, the test shows an aptitude for repetitive labor and doesn’t show actual interest. When they presented it, logistics sounded interesting. The reality is it’s just a repetitive task that would be better done by a machine, or a Mexican immigrant.”

The family played a couple of games and watched TV Friday evening. Em had me cuddled up on one side and Pey on the other as we watched the latest Marvel Comics hero defeat all comers. There were days when I wished there really were heroes like that in the world. But then, I suppose, they’d just want to control everyone’s life like everyone else with a little power did. Heroes today were corporate executives and senators—sometimes one and the same—who made the decisions that lives depended on.

I had to admit my V3 world was somewhat better at moderating the excesses of my V1 world. Corporate executives earned substantially more than the peons who actually did the work, of course, but executive earnings were capped at a percentage of what their employees made. In order for an exec to earn more, he had to increase the level of compensation for his employees. It made sense. V1 had never met or heard of an executive who earned the massive salaries they were paid.