Chapter 210

“What you’ve got to understand, son,” says the doctor, “is it’s all the fault of the alien space bats.”
—Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Look at this,” I said when we got up Tuesday and were sitting at breakfast. I’d opened my tablet to check the news. “What other secret organizations have been started with National Service black op funds?”

“You can’t be looking at one of those fake news sites, please,” Donna moaned.

“New York Times, “ I said. “An article probing the secret funds administered by the General Director of the National Service—where the funds come from and how they are distributed. You can’t imagine our office seeded the article, can you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Rachel said. “Our very own Beca might have leaked the headline. It sounds like her.”

“The article suggests the funds come from private organizations and corporations but are channeled through the Senate Committee on the National Service.”

“The Senate has a committee for the National Service?” Desi asked.

“Apparently. Is that the committee that would hear the reform bill before it went to the floor of the Senate?” I asked.

“Beyond my pay grade,” Rachel answered. “I’ll send a query up the channel. Is anyone else having more of these blueberry pancakes? This inn is at the top of my list of places to come back to.”

“Me too,” I said, setting the tablet aside.

Hurricane Delilah hit Florida near Kennedy Space Center and began chewing its way up the coast toward Jacksonville. There was no news of the SSR entering the fray but in all fairness, that region of Florida is more sparsely populated than Galveston. The forecasters weren’t sure how it was going to progress. It could turn inland across the Panhandle, continue up the Coast toward Savannah, or return to the sea. It was a toss-up at the moment. SSR’s location continued unknown.

We relaxed on our journey into Vermont, covering less than a hundred miles a day, stopping to see anything that looked interesting, and arriving at little inns in plenty of time to get a good run in and some quality loving. I didn’t stress Lamar with any more twenty-mile runs, but the four of us got five to ten miles a day in.

And we kept our IDs in the Faraday bag.

Per Ron’s advice, we picked up two cars at Troy, New York. One led us and the other fell in behind. Lamar and Leah were trailing a couple of miles back and we talked to let them know we’d picked up additional security. The campground where our motorhome was parked was out near Schenectady. It was a few miles to drive in to Albany for the performance, but it was extremely peaceful out here. We were all thankful to have a day of just sitting by a campfire, playing music, and cooking our own food for a change. I grilled chicken breasts and zucchini. Donna made a salad, and we invited all the security people to join us for dinner so we could learn to recognize them. It turned out they had a bunkhouse travel trailer parked not far from us, so they’d be staying at the campground.

And for all our preparations, we didn’t see any sign of the general or SSR.

Albany had a hotly contested seat for the twentieth congressional district. Unlike the generally reform-friendly districts of New York City, the incumbent here, and those across the northern tier of the state, was adamantly opposed to service reform. We couldn’t perform in every district but would hit three of the hottest campaigns in Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo.

I spent a couple of hours in the motorhome with my notes spread out in front of me. Four weeks previously, Ron had given me a list of candidates for office who had received donations from one or more of the eight companies I’d identified as making a ton of money off the National Service. One of the companies, a major food packager and distributor, was headquartered in upstate New York. It was interesting to find that particular agribusiness had donated heavily to the representative’s campaign fund. But my continued research, helped along by Ray’s company in Chicago, showed that Representative Lancaster’s campaign chest was also enriched with donations transferred from Senator Jeffries’ incredibly rich campaign funds. The more I looked at it, the more it appeared Jeffries was a central conduit for funds to representatives and senators to keep them in the fold, so to speak. Jeffries was even more powerful than I originally thought.

“Jacob?” Rachel sang at the door of the dressing room in Albany Friday evening. “You have a fan who would like to see you.” What the fuck? We never allowed audience members in the dressing rooms. For one thing, I was standing in my boxers, just getting ready to put on my first act outfit. For another, where the hell was security?

“Oh, my. Am I overdressed?” Abigail asked as she stepped into the room.

“Oh, God! Abby, what are you doing here? I mean in my dressing room?”

“Mmm. I came here with a couple messages, but at the moment, I’m just enjoying the scenery.”

“Well, just relax then while I get dressed, why don’t you?”

“Okay. Thanks.” She sat down across the room from me and watched me pull my trousers on, completely oblivious to the sarcasm in my invitation. “There are some hot contests up here and Mom wanted me to deliver some personal assurances to the pro-reform candidates running for office. It just happened to work out that my first stop coincided with yours in Albany.”

“I’m sure that was just a coincidence.”

“I wanted to check in to see how my neighbors were doing. The rest of them, I mean. I’ve had some nice chats with the ones who came back to DC last week. I really like them—especially Nanette and Rebeca. Coolio.”

“I’m glad.” I buttoned up my shirt and turned to face her. “So does the President have a message for me? Am I creating trouble?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the other reasons for me to be here. She just wanted to say thanks for keeping the heat turned up and to please watch your back.”

“A little late on that message. The general himself came to arrest us in Boston. We’d just left. I wonder how long I would have disappeared for this time. Permanently?”

“I was in Will’s office when Ron brought him that news. Will about tore the office up when he exploded. So, here’s one of Mom’s plain white envelopes,” she said, handing me the number 10 envelope. I glanced at the package on the floor in front of her.

“What’s that?” I asked. I locked the envelope in my viol case where I kept the Faraday bag.

“An early birthday present from Will, Jo, and Simon,” she said. She shoved the box toward me. It was a lot heavier than it looked. There was a card on top signed by all three.

“Things have been tense for you lately. We picked up this little toy from a shop in Chicago and thought you would have fun relaxing with it. Maybe you can teach it to sing! Happy birthday.”

I opened the box and looked at a pile of shit. I mean that’s what it looked like. You know that Facebook background that is a bunch of happy little piles of shit? This looked like it stepped off the page. It was about a foot in diameter and a foot tall and probably weighed about twenty pounds. It even had googly eyes and a painted white smile. I pulled it out of the box and set it on the floor.

“Teach me to sing!” it squawked.

“Oh, the family is going to love this,” I said. I put it back in the box. “Later, little fella.”

“Jacob,” Abby whispered. She’d come very close to me while I was examining the toy. “That little fella knows a lot of shit. You’d be surprised what you can learn from him. Or her. You get to decide. And when you teach it to sing, the song will advance reform at every level. Remember. It came from a very special toy shop in Chicago.”

I looked at her with my mouth open. It wasn’t a pile of shit toy. This little device had Design Intelligence. Thank you, Ray.

It’s got to be really difficult for people in this district to vote for reform. I understand it. One of the biggest anti-reform forces is located just a few miles west of here. It employs a lot of people in upstate New York. You’re loyal to it because it provides a ray of hope for a depressed economy here. It pays your wages and you owe it.

It pays the wages of others, as well. People who are in our government. Those people owe that company. So, the real question is whether the people of the twenty-first district have the fortitude to stand against dollars and vote for the betterment of the people, or to continue to take the money and live off the slavery of others.

Because that’s where that money comes from. What people in this district get paid and what is contributed through the taxes that aren’t avoided is a paltry percentage of the profits this company makes off the underpaid and mistreated labor provided by the National Service. They don’t want service reform because the service is a goose that lays a golden egg. Costs of processing, packaging, and distributing food have fallen dramatically in the past year and a half, due to the lucrative contracts with the service to provide slave labor in the fields of America. But you haven’t seen the benefits of that in the grocery store. You see the price of a can of beans rise from eighty-nine cents to two dollars. The distributors say this is because of the tensions along our border and the lack of good labor for the fields in this time of crisis. But production costs have fallen. On one hand, they are telling you to support their stance against reform or your jobs will be threatened. On the other hand, they are stealing back from you the wages they pay by gouging you on the prices at the grocery store.