If Lyric and Gia were surprised by how quickly Marley had gone from doubtful to committed on the interview project, they didn’t show it.
Gia was grinning. “That’s ...” she said, and she made an expression with wide eyes and fluttering hands.
“Congratulations,” Lyric said. “How are you feeling? I’d be nervous.”
Marley doubted that, but maybe they were assuming too much about Lyric. Maybe Lyric, like Marley, was less steady inside than she seemed from the outside. Then again, Lyric had been part of a dangerous resistance movement and had fled thousands of miles to live as an illegal alien far from home, and despite it all, she seemed at peace. Marley didn’t doubt she meant it when she said she’d be nervous in Marley’s place, but they were betting it would be a less gut-wrenching level of nervousness.
“I’m doing my best to focus on preparing,” Marley said. “Thinking about questions, mainly. If I focus on the details, it helps.”
“Marley’s going to be crazy famous,” Gia said.
“That’s not helping,” Lyric chided.
Gia shrugged. “I just want them to be prepared for adoration. It’s not always easy. I should know.” She blinked adorably.
“If you were any more adorable, you’d be a baby unicorn,” Marley said.
“Exactly,” said Gia. “When are we going?”
“We?” said Marley.
Gia laughed. “You don’t think we’re letting you go by yourself?” She counted off reasons on her fingers. “One, you’re visiting some man you’ve never met who is a complete political weirdo. Alone? I don’t think so. Two, we’ll distract you on the way there so that you don’t freak yourself out, which otherwise you will absolutely do. Three, we’ll point out how amazing you are when you’re done. Four, somebody has to come along to take care of Anthem.”
“Why can’t Anthem stay here with you?” said Marley.
“Because we’re going to be wherever you’re going!” Lyric said. “Come on, Marley, try to keep up.”
Late that afternoon, Gia left to help a group of the Lewis Lake kids who were rehearsing a play that was apparently about a sasquatch in love. Marley and Lyric sat on the couch in Marley’s guest apartment. Lyric was humming something low and intricate. Marley listened for a good minute or two before speaking.
“Come for a walk with me,” they said.
“OK,” said Lyric, taking Marley’s hand. The pressure of her warm palm felt good even in the heat of the afternoon. “Where should we walk?”
Marley’s throat felt tight all of a sudden, and they had to clear it. “You’d know better than me. Off in the woods somewhere?” they said.
Lyric raised an eyebrow, but instead of speaking, she tugged at Marley’s hand and led them outside, around the community dining room and away from the lake.
There was barely a path. Marley could just make out its windings through the dappled shade, up hillocks and through ranks of still evergreens that suffused the air with the bright scent of pine. Wrens squeaked and whistled, hidden in high branches. Away in the underbrush, some small animal moved. Their footsteps barely whispered in the soft earth and tea-colored old pine needles.
“Gia told me I’d like you,” Lyric said.
“She likes to be right about everything,” Marley said. Their heart was pounding, but it was more from excitement than worry. Lyric felt like someone who had always been in their life.
“True,” Lyric said. “And it’s hard to talk to her about it, because she generally is.”
“It’s one of her bad qualities,” Marley said. “I keep telling her she has to work on that.”
“Do you think she set us up?” said Lyric.
“I hope not,” Marley said. “If she did, she’ll never stop congratulating herself.”
“We should probably avoid, you know, getting interested in each other, then,” Lyric said.
“Uh,” said Marley. They were trying to keep up the banter, but they didn’t feel like joking about it.
“Or just try to ignore her,” Lyric suggested.
“Ignore Gia? I don’t think that’s possible. We should, um, probably just let her win this one.”
Lyric let go of Marley’s hand and put her arm around Marley’s waist instead as they walked.
“That’s probably best,” she said.
Marley had to clear their throat again and stopped to turn their head away and make a little, rough-voiced cough. Lyric’s arm wavered on Marley’s back, and Marley wanted to take her hand and pull the arm back more tightly around them, but the moment passed, and Lyric’s arm drifted away. Marley turned to look at Lyric and was caught by the beauty of her odd-colored eyes, the deep brown one and the dazzling green one. There was a sense of vertigo, almost of danger, and Marley pulled back from it, reminded of their other worry.
“Not to change the subject ...” they said.
“No, it’s fine,” said Lyric. “What’s up?” The two of them began walking again, side by side, shoulders a few inches apart.
“So ... I don’t know where to start with this, exactly,” Marley said. “I’ve been getting these messages. From the government.”
“From the government?” Lyric said. She glanced at Marley’s face, concerned. “What’s wrong? What do they say?”
“It’s ... They’re actually giving me a lot more money than I’m normally supposed to get.” Marley said. “And they send these messages saying I can’t tell anyone about it.”
“The government is?” said Lyric. “The Cascadian government?”
“I know, it sounds weird. It is weird.”
“It sounds like some kind of scam—you know?”
“Yes, I wondered about that—but they’re actually depositing the money. It’s from the same account as usual.”
“And why are they giving you extra money?”
Marley shrugged. “It’s supposed to be some kind of pilot program. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I guess I should just be grateful.”
Lyric shook her head. “No, that’s definitely weird. I mean, you know I’m kind of new to your government, but when somebody tells you they’re doing something nice for you, but you’re not supposed to tell anyone—”
“They say it’s because it’s a small pilot, and a lot of people would want to be included—something like that.”
“That still seems strange,” Lyric said. “Like, suspicious-strange. What do you think?”
“I think it’s strange and suspicious.”
Lyric nodded. “Can you show me? Since you already told me about it?”
“Sure.” They gestured up their message history and scrolled through. The messages weren’t there.
“This is weird ...” Marley said. They gestured for a voice command and said, “Show me any messages I’ve received in the last week about my CitDiv payment.” Marley had always preferred a gesture rather than a name for their AI interface, to minimize the illusion that the AI was a person.
There were no matching messages. “Show me any messages in the last month that have anything to do with money,” they said. There were a few matches for that, but none that had anything to do with CitDiv. Marley gestured for a voice command again. “Hey, did any messages get deleted recently?”
“Two messages expired late yesterday,” Marley’s AI said.
“Expired? Can you retrieve them?”
“Sorry, the sender didn’t authorize that.”
“Expired messages?” Lyric said.
“I guess so,” said Marley. Expiring resources were fairly common when security precautions were needed, so it wasn’t unusual in itself that the CitDiv messages had an expiration date. If Marley had been paying closer attention, they might have seen a notice when they’d first read them. “So what do I do?”
“You could always take the money and let it be,” Lyric said. “But it doesn’t sound like you want to. If it were me, I’d be wary too.”
“I’d like to tell them I just don’t want to participate.”
“And there’s no way to do that?” said Lyric.
“They make it sound like you can’t opt out,” Marley said, “but now that you ask, they don’t say specifically you can’t—they just don’t give you any way to do it.”
“How about contacting them and asking?”
They came to a small clearing where an old tree trunk had fallen. Lyric sat down on it, pulling Marley in to sit close to her side and putting an arm around Marley’s waist again. Marley shifted and put their arm over Lyric’s shoulders.
“I should have tried that,” Marley said. “Except ... I’m not sure who to contact.”
“Do you want to find somebody to message now?” Lyric said. “I can wait.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll do it later,” Marley said. Lyric leaned into Marley’s chest, and the two of them sat without speaking, listening to birds calling across the glade.
On Tuesday, Marley, Lyric, and Gia ate an early dinner. Then they called an autonomous car and climbed in with Anthem, and shared stories of Marley and Lyric’s college days until they arrived at the home of their interviewee, Scotty Ross.
The Ross home was an oversized, dark red, clapboard farmhouse that looked at least a century old, though it was well-kept. Behind the house, acres upon acres of farm stretched, with intermingled fruit trees and vegetables, beans and grains in a complex, variegated and mutually beneficial pattern of plantings that were thriving despite the heat. Slim, many-armed farming robots moved through the crops, manually pulling weeds, plucking unwanted insects from leaves, and strategically applying water where it was needed. The crops would be grown from heat-resistant and drought-resistant strains, pollinated in large part by bug-sized drones to take the place of the pollinators whose numbers had decreased so dramatically in the last decades. In the old days, as Marley understood it, farmers had to spray poison on their crops to fight pests and weeds, dig up entire fields on an annual basis even though it destroyed important microorganisms, spray water all over the place just to get some to the plants, and mix chemical fertilizers into soil that got more depleted with each passing season.
It also used to be the case that farming required a lot of manual labor, though, and Marley found themself wistful for a time when you could spend your day getting plants to grow and caring for animals. Not that they couldn’t have done that now if they wanted, but there was a difference between doing something because it was needed and doing something just to keep busy.
“It’s pretty,” Gia said. “Not ...” she made an expression of rapture “... but, you know, pretty.”
Anthem was excited to get out of the car and sniff everything. Since she’d follow Marley given half a chance, Gia had her on a leash, which Anthem tugged at whenever Gia was too slow to follow her to a new and fascinating smell.
Scotty stepped out the front door to meet them on the covered porch. He was a maybe forty-something white man, squatly built, with short, black hair, a wide-ranging beard, and eyes set deep under thick eyebrows. He raised one hand to wave a greeting. Marley walked briskly up to meet him, holding out a hand to shake, which he took when they reached the steps.
“You’re Marley,” he said. “And these two?”
“These are friends of mine, Gia and Lyric,” Marley said, pointing to each in turn. They’d decided not to worry about justifying having friends with them to Scotty. If he didn’t like them being there, they could wait outside, as long as it seemed safe.
“Well, come on in, everybody. Tiffany will get you something to drink.”
Gia waved away the car that had brought them. It closed its doors, made a three-point turn, and drove off, raising a trail of fine dust.
Scotty looked at Anthem. “That’s a beautiful dog you’ve got there. Some kind of mix?”
“Thanks,” Marley said. “Yes, Anthem’s a mutt. If you don’t want her in the house—”
“No, she’s welcome,” Scotty said. “I have kids. There’s no way a dog is going to track in more dirt than those kids. Do you have some kind of equipment you have to set up? I don’t know how these things work.”
“Some of the more elaborate shows have robot and drone cameras, but we’ll be shooting with just lenses and house recorders. Jessica said you gave the OK to share your feeds?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, that’s fine. I forgot she asked about that.”
Inside, the house was dim, lit mainly with old-style corded lamps. Scotty steered them into a living room with pine board floors, a couch, and several armchairs. He took a seat in a large, brown one and gestured for Marley to take the couch.
“Thanks,” Marley said. Lyric and Gia stood apart near the arch that led back toward the front door, and after some prodding, Anthem sat down by Gia and consented to a doggie massage. The editing software would remove all three from the scene.
Marley brought up their notes for the interview. A woman about Scotty’s age with white-blonde hair came in, carrying a tray full of glasses.
“Iced tea?” she said. Gia and Lyric took a glass each, as did Scotty.
“Thanks, girl,” Scotty told the woman.
Marley smiled as they shook their head to the tea. “You must be Tiffany,” they said.
Tiffany gave a short smile and left the room without answering.
“So you’re what, Japanese?” Scotty said.
“My father’s Korean,” said Marley. “My mother’s mostly German. I was born here. What about you?”
“Me?” Scotty said. He seemed a little surprised. “Well, I’m American back at least as far as my great-grandfather—or ‘Cascadian,’ I guess.” Marley could hear the quotes. “I was born here, but my sister was born after we moved to Idaho, when I was two or three, so when my grandmother left us this farm, I moved here, but Alicia wasn’t a citizen, so she couldn’t come. This place is plenty big enough for both our families, but she can’t come.”
“It’s hard to get citizenship,” Marley said.
“Sure, but she also doesn’t want to give up being American. I don’t blame her. I have dual because I was born here, but I don’t see why it’s got to be a separate country. That’s the thing.”
“So you support reunification?”
“Everybody should. They can call this place whatever they want: it’s still America. Meanwhile, I’m working this farm that’s been in my family for four generations, and the money I make is helping pay people to sit around and do nothing! In the United States, they don’t tax you all the way to death.”
“But you get CitDiv back?”
“No, ma—” he began, but he seemed to catch himself. Marley had been pretty sure he’d been about to call them “ma’am.” He was stuck for a moment, probably considering “sir” and throwing that out, too. Finally, he just said, “No, we don’t. We get some subsidy money for the farm, but we turned the socialist dividend down. We take responsibility for paying our own way. I don’t see why more people can’t do that, why they can’t let people make their own living like they used to.”
“What about people who don’t have jobs?”
“They can go out and find them! You’ll find a job if you look hard enough. I found work here. You’ve got work. You ever been laid off?”
“Actually, yes—less than two weeks ago. I used to write for a streaming series, Deaf Ears, but now there’s an AI that writes all the shows.”
“And look at you, you’ve already got another job.”
“Well, it’s volunteer work at this point.”
“See, that’s one of the problems. They expect people to volunteer for everything and accept whatever money the government wants to give them. It’s all backwards.”
“I feel a lot better having work to do,” Marley said. “But it seems like people often can’t find new jobs—even in America.”
Scotty shook his head. “I’m not saying they’ve got a perfect system, but the thing is, over there everybody’s got opportunity. Here, they take away the opportunity to fend for yourself, and people get lazy, and they get irresponsible, and then that leads to immorality.”
Marley felt like they were failing to do the job they’d been sent to do. True, they were having a civil conversation with Scotty, but they seriously doubted that anything he’d said so far would cause people with different views to listen.
Then again, the first constructive part of most hard conversations was letting people get everything out. If you were used to arguing, you’d want to make your point and make sure it was heard. Once you were sure you’d been heard, there might be a room for something more.
Scotty had a lot to get out. His grievances were especially focused on money going out to people who, he felt, hadn’t earned it, especially through the CitDiv, but also through reparations and other programs. He dismissed Sponsored Businesses as government trickery designed to reap profits rightly belonging to entrepreneurs. For all that, what seemed to bother him the most was that he’d been separated from the America he’d grown up in.
“Do you feel isolated?” Marley said. “Cut off?”
“Of course I do!” he said. “My friends from when I was a kid are all in America, and none of them will come out here because this whole country’s a big socialist experiment, and they don’t want to get caught up in that. The government here decides what’s right and wrong, what words you can use to call people, what you’re supposed to do with your time and your money and your family ... I know America doesn’t get everything right, but at least there, they’re free! And here’s this rich place we live in with all these resources and all this money, and by rights that should be part of America! My sister’s family is trying to make do on my brother-in-law’s salary—he’s a dentist, and there most of the dentists own their own AIs and bots, instead of the government owning them.”
“I hate to see how many Americans are struggling,” Marley said. “I feel like they could be doing as well as we are if they managed things the same way.”
“Oh, don’t be fooled,” Scotty said. “Cascadia’s not a wealthy nation because of these Shangri-La policies. It’s the other way around: we’re a wealthy nation because we have all these natural resources and tech businesses, everything we took from America, and we use all that money to prop up these crazy government programs.”
“You feel like we should share what we have here with America,” they said.
“Exactly,” said Scotty.
Marley wasn’t sure what to say. Scotty seemed frustrated, but part of his frustration seemed to be based on genuine worry about Americans who weren’t doing that well. Marley had always thought about the two countries like two paths that forked from the same road. Cascadia had chosen a path of caring for its citizens, they felt, and America had chosen a path of letting everyone fend for themselves, which meant that the people who had advantages to begin with kept gathering more advantages, while anyone who was just trying to live on their own labor and citizenship was in danger of being left behind.
At the same time, was it possible that some large part of Cascadia’s well-being came from having resources America didn’t have? Marley didn’t think that was the heart of the issue, but they had to admit that they hadn’t seriously considered the possibility. They’d learned a narrative about why Cascadia was a place where people were more likely to thrive, and they hadn’t questioned that narrative.
Even so, the story of Cascadia’s flourishing that Marley knew seemed to fit the facts better than the story Scotty believed in. Out of respect for Scotty, though, Marley resolved to learn more about how he was seeing it. Even if their conclusion wasn’t changed, it would be good to talk specifics with someone like Scotty. Maybe they could get closer to agreement about what the facts actually were.
Scotty was shaking his head and sighing. “It’s not that I don’t love this place,” he said. “I mean, we’re doing all right, even if the government has its nose in everything we do. There are good people here. It’s a good place for the kids to grow up, as long as we keep them out of the government school programs. I just think they made a mistake, splitting off like that.”
“Were you—” Marley started, but they were interrupted by an urgent bulletin icon flashing in their lenses.
“What the hell?” said Scotty, reaching out to tap something in his field of view. Marley assumed it was the same bulletin.
Marley tapped the icon themself.
American warships have entered Cascadian waters and are launching drones over Seattle, the bulletin read. There was none of the usual interactive content and explanatory materials. Citizens are now reporting American drones and satellite weapon attacks. Take shelter in—
With a sudden and shocking crackle, the bulletin vanished. A no connection message flashed on Marley’s lenses. They tried to gesture the bulletin back up, but there was nothing on their display, and their gestures got no response.
“Shit!” said Gia. Then, with more conviction, “Shit!”
Marley launched themself off the couch and ran to the front porch, looking to the sky, half expecting to see planes or swarms of drones or distant mushroom clouds, but there was no sign of chaos so far. The sun was low in the sky, nearly touching the horizon. To the east, something just above the trees glinted. Then there was another glint, further south, and another one next to that. A smudge of something—dark clouds?—rose above the hills in that direction.
Anthem began to bark, and Gia came out wrestling against Anthem’s pull on the leash, Lyric beside her. Scotty came with them, scanned the sky, then pointed to the east, where Marley had been looking.
Marley turned to Scotty, looking in his eyes.
“Not like this,” he said, barely audible. “It doesn’t need to happen like this.”
“Are those drones?” Gia said, looking where Scotty had pointed. “Or ... aircraft or something?”
“I need to go,” Lyric said, and she started down the steps. Marley kept pace with her, and Gia was right behind.
Lyric stopped short, turning back toward her friends. “I need to get out of here. You don’t. If they come here, they’ll probably leave you two alone.”
“I’m coming with you,” Marley said. “You told me to try to keep up.”
“That’s not funny right now!” Gia shouted.
“It’s a little funny,” said Lyric. “OK, we have to turn off our lens systems, everything. No electronics. We don’t know if they’ll be tracking that stuff when the lens network comes back on.”
“You girls need to stay put,” Scotty called from the porch. “It’s not safe out there. Come back in. We’ve got an emergency radio we can try. We’ll go down in the basement if there’s any danger.”
“Thank you,” Marley said, not bothering to respond to you girls. “But we have to go.”
“Go where?” Scott said.
Marley didn’t have an answer for that. They just followed Lyric as she made a beeline south, across a meadow and toward the woods.
It might have been their imagination, but Marley thought they smelled smoke.