Securely reunited, Moses joked to Jay that he hadn’t been, well, less unhappy in years. They laughed at his reluctance to say the word “happy” without the prefix “un.” Whatever the reason, the passage of time or repression, the Jay-Alchemy affair no longer ignited his jealousy or feelings of inadequacy. When Jay attended a Nightingale function, she and Alchemy exchanged pleasantries and that was it. Mostly, Jay and Laluna sat together or hid in a corner. The two of them got along well, actually liked each other, but their differences in age and basic interests kept them from reaching out for a closer relationship.
Moses threw himself full force into expressing the Nightingale Party’s philosophical and political goals as talking points for the press, or young candidates they hoped would vie for local positions, laying the groundwork for Alchemy’s 2020 presidential run. Professorially speaking, “philosophy” and “talking points” remained incompatible, and some of his former colleagues at SCCAM reproached him for crossing enemy lines from academic to political operative. He countered, or maybe rationalized, by saying they’re just different forms of educating.
With Alchemy staking a huge chunk of his fortune on the party’s future, all other sacrifices became trivial. Moses remained both somewhat apart from and overseer of those who ran the analytics, local offices, advertising, polling and everyday PR flackery, Web and social media. All heads of the departments sent him weekly summaries, which he put into one-page summaries for Alchemy. The Nightingale Party occupied the same building as the reduced-in-size Nightingale Foundation.
Laluna, who claimed no special interest in delving into the netherworld of Cosmological Kinetics, had finished the music for the video and bid Crouse and Barker adieu, which satisfied Winslow. Borden asked Moses for his permission to speak to Jay. Less than jubilant, Jay agreed. Moses asked Borden not to send him a copy of or even notes of the interview.
The rumored Alchemy-Absurda relationship and the possible blowback from the unpredictable Mindswallow still rankled Borden. Moses asked what specifically worried her. Oddly, she clammed up. He took the bait and pressed Alchemy, who, exasperated, told Moses, “Get Cherry on it if you want to.” He called her. A few weeks later, she informed him she had a tape he needed to hear. Moses asked her to send it to his home.
Alchemy and Louise Urban Vulter, who had jumped from right-wing media rabble-rouser to junior senator from Arizona, were in the middle of a ten-day barnstorming tour. Their next stop was at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and Moses decided to go.
Vulter and Alchemy were vying to become the voice of the disaffected and disenfranchised. Vulter had tamed her belligerent style and presented herself as a representative of “my silent minority, working- and middle-class real Americans.” Of late, she’d made veiled references to breaking away from the Republicans and establishing the Reformation Party, which not only lessened the chances of Alchemy being branded the spoiler but also increased his chances for the future. Moses noted to Alchemy that the last time four serious candidates ran, Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth president with thirty-nine percent of the popular vote.
In the ten minutes before they appeared on the stage, Moses observed the playful rapport between Alchemy and Louise. They’d found common ground that surprised them both: Alchemy’s expertise in shooting guns, which he’d learned as a teenager in Virginia, Vulter’s Insatiables fandom, and her reputation along Prescott’s Whiskey Row as “one hell-raisin’ bawdy babe.”
The audience’s questions showed a preponderant interest in all things Alchemy, from his opinions on other bands to his political positions. Vulter, sensing Alchemy taking over the evening, reverted to her go-to issue and jingoistic persona, unleashing an anti-Islamic fusillade.
“Alchemy, your fandom is a nice subject, but what of your plans to dismantle our nuclear arsenal? How do you propose to stem the Islamic tide? One that would ban your music, prohibit your lifestyle? We’re idly witnessing this imminent peril threatening you and all the faithful. I demand we use all of our power to save our American way of life. The attacks on our institutions and governmental systems are not cyberterror—they are cyberwar waged by Islamic technojihadists. Suicide bombers without the suicide. I know how to win this war. Singing a nice song won’t do it.”
Many in the audience applauded passionately.
Alchemy, measuring the temperature of the crowd, began to sing: “Oneness though many / in this land o’ plenty …” The audience joined in: “we are the ones who are proud to share / open your arms if you dare.”
“C’mon, Louise, join the rest of us. Don’t be so stodgy,” Alchemy teased, fully aware that Vulter would not appreciate being called “stodgy.”
She joined in: “Let’s have some fun / all hail E Pluribus Unum Wampum.”
When the auditorium quieted, he began again, “Now, don’t we feel better? Seriously, Louise, I don’t disagree that this is a major problem for now and the future. A song won’t stop a real or cybermissile, but it can make us stop and think about what we share, so that the missile isn’t fired. Taking an eye for an eye, or four eyes of theirs for one of ours, isn’t a solution. Better to change cyberswords into cyberplowshares.”
Back in the hotel, eating a room service dinner, Alchemy listened to the Cherry-supplied recording with his usual insouciance:
A woman’s voice: “Oh, my God … Oh, my, my … Oh, baby, let me …”
Alchemy: “No wonder … they call you gums.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, that’s me and Absurda. I forgot all about that. Goes back to when we were at Juilliard. All of
us were taking turns faking sex with each of the others in the room. Somebody edited out their voices.”
“You want to talk to Borden? Maybe give Cherry the names of the other people there?”
“I’ll try to remember who they were.”
“How is Mindswallow going to respond if this gets out?”
“He, Carlotta, this new woman he’s been seeing, Laluna, and I had dinner not long ago. I think he’s over being pissed at me. I’ll talk to him.” One of his three cells rang. “Hi, Louise, yes it was a good night. What’s up?”
Moses motioned asking if he should leave. Alchemy shook his head. “Yeah, saw it. What can we do? Can’t promise no more songs.” Vulter was vexed by the local TV news station playing only a sound bite of the audience singing. “I’ll call the station and ask them to add something. Okay? And yeah, I say take it.”
When he hung up, he explained to Moses the real reason for her call. “The bigwigs in her party offered her a spot on the new Committee on Anti-American Activities. She’s ambivalent. Her libertarian and ‘security’ instincts clash.”
The repeal of the laws that allowed the CAA to investigate and legally incarcerate American citizens by a star-chamber-like process, along with rewording and perverting the original intention of the Cyber Safety Acts, were central to the Nightingale Party’s mission.
“You kind of like her, don’t you?”
“She’s more thoughtful, and funnier, than those on our side think. Sometimes she panders too much, and I wish she were a little less—”
“Rigid. Mose, she and I could be a formidable team. Don’t go apoplectic. Never going to happen. We’d never agree on who should be on top”—a wisp of a smile crossed his lips—“of the ticket …” Moses laughed. “Mose, I got a more serious question. What do you think of shifting tactics, so I go for California governor next year? I can win. Then we go presidential in ’24.”
“I’m thinking it’s an idea to consider for not very long. Unless it’s a total disaster, the ’20 election sets the stage for ’24. If you run for president and don’t win, that’s expected—we go again in ’24. Run for governor and don’t win—you’re branded a ‘loser.’ If anything, having no record is better than a blemished one. What brought this up?”
“I got a feeler from the Independence for California peeps. They already have a half million signatures for the ballot initiative. They’ll file when they reach a million. They’re in search of a standard-bearer with name recognition and clout.”
“If that’s the case, then this is the worst idea since the initiative to make California six states. IFC wants California, Washington, and Oregon to secede and get Vancouver to join in a union to form a loose association with the U.S. and Canada.”
“I know what they want.”
“Then how can you?… It’s akin to the Articles of Confederation, which failed. It’s nuts. Impossible.”
“Really?!”
Moses always marveled that in Alchemy’s world “impossible” did not exist. He also saw that instead of getting tired, he was getting juiced and ready to riff deep into the night.
“Okay, Mose.” He was standing now and circling around the room. “I’ll talk to Winslow about the tape and IFC when I’m back in L.A. Get me more info on IFC and who’s giving them money.”
“Sure. I’ll do some other research, too.”
“But Mose, follow my reasoning here. You’re the one who told me America is fracturing. That the three West Coast states have more common interests and beliefs than their neighbors in Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho. You’re the one who said the three coastal states are among the best options for ringing up good numbers. That’s fifty, sixty million people, and they have an economy that would rank among the largest in the world. Didn’t you say that somehow these rifts need to be repaired or it could lead to permanent fractures? If I’m gov when it cracks …”
“I said maybe in fifty or a hundred years, because all empires run their courses. Not in five or ten years. I believe you can begin the repair we need now.”
“Revolutionary change starts in the head, but it’s the feet that make it happen. One can look back a thousand years easier than forward fifty. Be futurific and march forward.”
Alchemy closed his eyes and seemed suddenly far away.
“Alchemy, what? Where are you? Say what you’re thinking.”
“That shit with Louise and the Muslims. Makes me crazy, too. But all this religious posturing has made the line separating church and state all but disappear. I’m going to make it reappear. Whether it’s for governor or prez, you know it’s going to come up again and again. I want to get out in front of it. And ‘spiritual but not religious’ is liberal bogusocity.”
Moses was beyond wanting to argue with his brother. He wanted to go to bed, but Alchemy was in the zone.
“Mose, you’re a progressive politically. But a true progressive has to make leaps in every direction. You still can’t extinguish that niggling belief. I said belief, not doubt. Ninety, ninety-five percent of the time you don’t believe in God, but a secret little piece of you still isn’t sure.”
“I doubt, therefore I am.” A slight deprecating smile crossed Moses’s face.
“I doubt, but still act, therefore I am. We’re forty, fifty years into the new world of the digital age, and with the right vision we are on the cusp of a new political and social order. It took Christianity two hundred and fifty, three hundred and fifty years to become the historical force that dominated the last seventeen hundred years. Within seventy-five years of Gutenberg’s invention, Luther and the Protestant Reformation took hold and undid the monolithic power of Catholicism in a timeframe that seemed, to them, unimaginably fast. The quantum revolution is not the future—it’s the present. We’re not in the Industrial Age anymore. It’s the Cyber Age, and ‘cyberplowshares’ can take us to a new era where religion and nationalism are as archaic as idol worship and the steam engine. A man or a woman working with a binary device, not some papyrus or Gutenberg Bible—a believer in humankind’s power and intelligence, will lead us to a Promised Land without God. Or to extinction.”