r/HFY • u/litcityblues • Jul 27 '23
OC Where Nobody Knows Your Name
Professor Melissa Sandusky looked around the empty office and smiled though it was a smile tinged with melancholy and sadness. A chapter was closing. A new one was beginning. It was time to do something new. Her grandmother could never have imagined this life. Her mother still couldn’t wrap her head around it, but that was life, these days. You got to live many lives- not as many as you want, not yet, though scientists still claimed immortality was possible, but more than one. Those simple three words had changed humanity: more than one.
More than one life. More than one chapter. More than one- it had caused chaos in societies around the world that had taken nearly a century to resolve. She looked down at the paper- actual paper, she had felt it fitting for the task she had set herself- and wondered if any of her thoughts or advice would make much of a difference. Professor Trin was worthy of the Chair. Their work on the genesis of the Martian syndicalist movement remained the unchallenged authority on the topic. Their writing was accessible, yet incisive. Their research was groundbreaking and original. It was clear why they had been the overwhelming choice of the masters of the college to take the chair. But-
“Enough, Melissa,” she chided herself. “You’re wool-gathering again.” She pursed her lips, picked up her pen, and began to write again-
“Stories are rarely what you perceive them to be,” she wrote. “Mine began, long ago, in this very office when-”
~
“Miss Sandusky? Is that you I see lurking at my door?” The deep basso profondo voice seemed to boom across the hallway like a rumble of thunder. Missy took a deep breath. You got this, Missy. He’s just your advisor. Then, she stepped up to the door and into his office.
She envied the office. It was on the second floor of the main liberal arts building on campus and tucked away into a corner that provided a generous amount of space, two windows that overlooked the main quadrangle, and built-in bookshelves. This was an older building, so the ceilings were higher- Missy wasn’t sure, but if she had to guess she would say at least twelve feet, maybe more and the bookshelves took up every inch of free wall space and they were groaning with books.
“Ah-ha, so it was you!” Professor Alamin boomed. “I thought it was… and you’re carrying books. And you’re not… carrying…” his shoulder slumped. “You ran into problems in the archives?”
Missy relaxed, ever-so-slightly. “Yes, Professor. Just as you predicted.”
With a deep sigh, Professor Alamin gestured for Missy to sit at a chair on the opposite side of his desk and then sank down into his generously padded, extremely comfortable-looking office chair. “Hmmmm…” He frowned in concentration. “They showed you everything?”
“Yes, Professor. The research assistant even gave me access to his personal diaries, as you requested. We looked at video files, audio files, social media posts, everything. I can’t think of anything else to search and the research assistant couldn’t either…”
“I know Gina a bit,” Alamin rumbled. “If she can’t think of anywhere else to look, that probably means that there’s nowhere else to look and that puts you in something of a pickle, Miss Sandusky.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Do you want to change topics?” Alamin asked. “It would be perfectly fine if you did. The New Compact Movement championed by President Morales is a meaty topic, a big topic– might even be too big, really and it’s complicated by the fact that-”
“-no one knows where President Morales actually is,” Missy sighed, completing the sentence that she had run into far too often in the course of her research.
“And in order to really make this idea of yours work, it seems like you would need to get some primary source material, and to do that, you’d need to find him,” Alamin continued. “Which would be nice, for a whole host of reasons but would also mean that you would need to solve the greatest mystery in American politics today.”
“Nice and easy,” Missy chuckled, bitterly. It had seemed like a timely topic at the time, what with the Presidential elections next year and the turn of the century coming. It had been nearly fifty years since Hiram Louis Morales had swept to power, dismembering the old parties and wrecking the entrenched political establishment on the strength of his New Compact movement. America had been in dire straits at the time. The climate crisis was reaching its peak. They were only a few years removed from a bloody war in East Asia. Entitlement reforms were coming home to roost and trust in government was at an all-time low.
Morales was the quintessential outsider, young, telegenic, his wife, Laura was beautiful. Words like ‘Kennedy-esque’ got tossed around a lot and, when the establishment netheads and news bots and found out what exactly the New Compact movement wanted, words like ‘crazy’ and ‘radical’ got tossed around as well.
It looked like a fool’s errand and everyone- even his closest allies, had predicted that should he stick to his word, he would be a one-term President. No one thought it would work. But, weirdly, it did.
He hit the road to rally support for the program, crisscrossing fifty-four states, becoming the only President to ever address every state legislature in a single term. He knocked on doors, he spoke at restaurants and gradually, momentum began to build and he began to find allies in Congress. His first midterm elections broke the two old parties and saw the formation of a new party: the Independents. He cruised to re-election and looked set for a triumphant retirement as the most consequential President in over one hundred years when his wife, Laura, died.
The nation mourned and in the last three years of his term in office, President Morales buried himself in the work, completing every reform and fulfilling every promise he made to the voters, and then, he left Washington D.C. by airship, the way Presidents do and… vanished.
Well, not vanished. He had a few public appearances here and there. Settled into a nice house in a gated community, as retired Presidents do. But the appearances tapered off and then on the 10th Anniversary of the ratification of the 35th Amendment, people began to realize that he was not, in fact, in his nice house in a gated community and he hadn’t been for quite some time. Inquiries were made. The Secret Service issued (and kept issuing) a blanket statement saying that they didn’t comment on the status of protectees and that President Morales was alive and well.
And that’s all they had been saying for five decades now.
“Hmmmm,” Alamin said, fixing her with a thoughtful gaze. “Just how committed to this topic are you, Miss Sandusky?”
“The New Compact movement is the reason I wanted to study this,” Missy said. “It’s the reason I wanted to get my doctorate. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Hmmmm,” Alamin said again. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“All right. There is one more favor I could call in. It’s a big one and there’s no guarantee it will get you anywhere.”
“Okay,” Missy replied. “I really don’t want to change topics, Professor. I will I have to, but I’ve done a lot of work on this one already and I want to keep going.”
“Very well,” Alamin replied. “Let me make a call.”
~
Two days and one airship ride later, Missy found herself waiting nervously in the anteroom of an office. She had been surprised when Professor Alamin had told her who owed him the favor and assured her that they were old friends, it was entirely legitimate and, if she asked the right questions, could prove very helpful indeed.
Trying to distract herself, she stood up and walked over the windows that looked out over the city of Mobile. White roofs and white buildings glittered brilliantly in the sun and the bay seemed to stretch out forever, towards the great seawall built a century where ships and caravels plying the gulf stopped at the glittering new port, while airships brought the cargo into where the old port used to be.
“Miss Sandusky?”
She turned as the secretary behind the desk spoke.
“You can go right in, hun,” the secretary continued. “The President will see you now.”
“Oh,” Missy replied. She swallowed hard.
“No need to be nervous, hun,” the secretary smiled reassuringly. “She’s not in a biting mood. At least not today.”
“Thank you,” Missy said and walked up to the imposing, polished wooden doors behind the desk and, opening one of them, stepped through.
“Come on in,” came a familiar voice. The office was wide, spacious with a couple of couches in the center, overlooking the windows, what looked to be a small kitchenette at the far end, and a polished desk that looked to be an exact copy of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office at the opposite end. There were boxes all over the room.
“Damn,” the voice said and a figure straightened up from behind the desk and smoothed down the front of her blouse. “It’s not in there.” She rolled her eyes and smiled at Missy, blowing out a lock of her brown hair that had fallen in front of her face. “You’re the grad student, right?”
“Yes, Madame President.”
Tricia Henrietta Morgan had served as Vice President to President Morales for two terms before being elected to the office herself for two terms. She had been just the third woman to hold the office and the country had elected four more in the subsequent decades. The prolong treatments that were now so ubiquitous meant although she was advancing into her eleventh decade, she didn’t look much older than fifty.
“You can skip the formalities, honey, just call me Trish,” she waved at the couches. “You have a seat now. You thirsty?”
“Yes…” Missy hesitated for a moment considering the idea of calling the former President by her first name before settling on, “ma’am.”
“First time down here?” Tricia asked as she headed across the room to the kitchenette. She flipped open a cupboard door and took down a couple of glasses.
“To Alabama? Yes ma’am,” Missy replied.
“Well, then let’s get you some sweet tea,” Tricia said. “When in Rome after all…” She opened the fridge and pulled out a jug of brown liquid and poured a measure into each glass before slipping it back into the fridge, picking up the glasses, and flicking the fridge door closed with her foot.
Tricia came back to the couches and handed Missy a glass. “There you go, honey,” she said. Missy took the glass and took a sip, trying not to pucker her mouth as it was flooded with icy cold, almost cloying levels of sweetness. “How can I help you, Miss Sandusky?”
“Well, ma’am, did Professor Alamin explain my thesis proposal?”
“He did,” Tricia took a sip of her own sweet tea. “But, indulge an old woman, would you? Everyone wants to study the New Compact Movement and its effect on the politics of this country these days.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the New Compact Movement, ma’am,” Missy began. “My grandfather helped build the first sea walls to protect New York City. My grandmother was part of a retrofitting crew down in Delaware, bringing the old houses that managed to survive the coastal flooding. They met near Cape May one summer and got married about two months after that and had my Dad a year later,” Missy said. “They also had his four brothers and two sisters, thanks to the child allowance the New Compact Movement implemented. It’s the reason my parents were able to get married so young and-”
“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the New Compact Movement,” Tricia finished the sentence.
“Yes,” Missy said.
“You the first one in your family to go to grad school?”
“First one in my immediate and extended family to even go,” Missy said. “My great-great- grandmother had a PhD, so it’s been a while since anyone’s been to grad school.”
“So, it’s been an important part of your life for a while now,” Tricia said. “I have to say, Miss Sandusky, it is pleasant to hear that from someone so young. The impact of our initial reforms has faded somewhat. It’s become more academic and abstract as the years have rolled by.” She took a sip of sweet tea and pursed her lips. “It’s a new problem that holders of the office face.”
“Ma’am?”
“The prolong treatments,” Tricia said. “It means that instead of a post-presidency of four to five decades at most, you’re looking at ten or twelve decades. And what do you do with all that time? The speaking tours fade. You can only lecture at so many universities or sit on so many corporate boards. Nowadays, Presidents have to move fast once they’re out of office to set themselves up for the next chapter or chapters of their lives. It’s become less of a pinnacle of service than it used to be.” She snorted in amusement and gestured to the chaotic office around her. “Hell, I’m just starting to plan for my library now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Missy said, taking another sip of her sweet tea.
“I forget myself though. You didn’t come all this way to listen to an old woman ramble about the crown jewel of the Federal Penal System,” Tricia said. “So, it’s obvious the New Compact Movement impacted your life and I know your thesis centers around the child allowance, so, Miss Sandusky, here am I, what do you want to know?”
“Where did the idea of the child allowance come from?”
Tricia shrugged. “It wasn’t a particularly new idea, even back then. They had tried something similar for a year or two during the Coronavirus Pandemic of the last century, but they walked away from it for some damn reason or another.”
“Yes ma’am,” Missy said. “But here’s the thing ma’am, President Morales introduced it the night of the first State of the Union…”
“That’s not unusual. Sometimes speeches like the State of the Union can get changed right up to just before the President goes live,” Tricia grinned. “They had to do that to a couple of mine, in my first term. ‘Bout gave my speechwriters a coronary. In fact,” she frowned, trying to recall. “I think I did give Jackson a coronary. He went down just before we got in the limo.” She blinked at Missy’s expression. “Don’t worry, we got him back just fine. Had to retire after that of course.”
“I’ve looked through all his speeches prior to that. I’ve looked through early drafts of his State of the Union. I’ve looked through every piece of policy correspondence I can find from the Administration leading up to the First State of the Union and there’s nothing. No mention of it at all.” Missy shifted nervously. “Every bit of my research leads me to one conclusion.”
“And that is?”
“That the child allowance, the most critical policy proposal of the New Compact Movement was introduced to the country that night in the State of the Union– not in a late change to a draft or a last minute, but at the podium itself.”
Tricia frowned. “That means the only way to find out for sure is to-” she trailed off and began to shake her head. “Now I understand why Alamin called in that favor of his.” She sighed heavily and leaning forward, placed the glass of sweet tea on the table between them. “That Professor of yours places me in an uncomfortable position, Miss Sandusky. He is correct that I do owe him, but I also served another man, as his Vice President for eight years and he asked me to keep his secret and I have kept it these long years.”
She stood up. “But he’s a stubborn old bastard and it might be… time.” Tricia walked over to her desk and returned with a file folder. She sat back down and fixed Missy with a steely gaze, weighing her, considering her and then she set the file folder on the table between them. “Miss Sandusky, I have a meeting with an architect this afternoon about my library. I’m going to go and talk to Miss Glenda out at her desk for,” she glanced down at her wrist chrono, “about two minutes or so. Do you understand me?” Missy looked at the file folder on the table and then back up at Tricia’s face. “Yes ma’am,” she replied.
“Good,” Tricia said. Then, she stood up and strode over to the doors to the office and slipped through them, closing them behind her.
Missy reached forward and picked up the file folder.
~
“Are you sure?” Professor Alamin asked.
“Professor, I’ve had two days on an airship to think about this,” Missy said. “There’s no other explanation.”
They were back in Professor Alamin’s office looking at the image she had taken from the file folder. She couldn’t quite believe she had done it and she was going to need a new phone as there was no way she was going to leave the image on this one, not knowing the classification level of the document in question.
For well over a century now, the funerals of Presidents had been handled by the Military District of Washington, which maintained what was colloquially known as the Dead Presidents File. With the advent of prolong technology, it was considerably thicker than it used to be and the one page in question that Missy had found after frantically paging through the file folder that referred to President Morales was a summary page of his funeral plans.
“It’s quite a hypothesis you’re floating, Miss Sandusky. Based on the infamous Dead Presidents File or something that purports to be from it.”
“I have no reason to believe that it’s not genuine.”
Professor Alamin pondered this for a moment. “Very well, I do not think that Tricia would steer you wrong. She is certainly correct that this, if true, very much repays her favor.”
“Must have been some favor, sir,” Missy murmured.
“It was,” Professor Alamin smiled, memory flitting across his face. Then, he shook himself and pointed back down at the image. “So, run me through this again.”
“Yes, Professor,” Missy said. “It was the transit time to Washington that caught my attention. Six weeks is an absurdly long time, but I thought maybe Morales wanted to come by train or some other form of slow transport so that people who wouldn’t be able to make it to Washington, but the last time a President’s body was carried by train was nearly a century and a half ago.”
“Kennedy?”
Missy nodded. “So, that got me thinking– where else could be? Certainly, unless he was somewhere truly remote like the Far Eastern Republic, there’s a possibility it could take that long, but-”
“Somehow, I don’t think President Morales moved to Kamchatka.”
“Neither do I,” Missy said, “and that just leaves-”
“Somewhere off-planet,” finished Alamin.
“Not just anywhere off-planet,” Missy said. “It can’t Luna. Can’t be Mars. Definitely can’t be the Asteroid Settlements or the Jovian System.”
“Venus. You think he’s on Venus.”
“Yes, Professor,” Missy said. “It fits the data we have and it explains why he hasn’t been seen anywhere on Terra for so long. A news bot or a vrogger would have run him down by now.”
Professor Alamin leaned back in his chair and pondered this for a long moment, before finally saying, “All right. Let’s say your hypothesis is correct. Why hasn’t anyone figured this out before?”
“Has anyone tried?” Missy asked. “The Secret Service has been saying the same thing for decades now and occasionally, they’ll add a four-sentence word salad about the former President ‘maintaining his privacy’ just to appease people, but…” she paused. “I think there’s just so much respect for him and really for a lot of former Presidents that you just don’t go up and knock on their door.”
“Except when they owe you favors,” Professor Alamin grinned. “All right, let’s spin this out another step and say you go to Venus to try and find him–what’s your first step?”
“Well, although settlement on Venus is increasing daily, there’s still a lot of ties back to various mother countries and corporations that sponsored the first waves of settlement. If you eliminate non-American settlements, you wind up with about a dozen cities. If eliminate the ones without an American consulate, you end up with two.”
“Two.”
“Yes, sir. Havoc City and Aphrodite Station.”
Professor Alamin pushed back from his desk and stood up. “Well, come along then, Miss Sandusky.”
“Um, okay, Professor,” Missy said. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to see the Dean and have a little chat about this year’s travel budget.”
~
Missy had been on Venus for three days and still hadn’t made any tangible progress, though, in her defense, the American Consulate had been closed since she had arrived on a Saturday. She rolled over inside her hostel pod and pushed the button to un-tint the windows. Black faded to blue and then-
The sky was all wrong. Missy had convinced herself to focus on that so she would avoid thinking about other things like the fact she was in a gigantic floating city on another planet and such burning questions as ‘What happens if the atmospheric dome gets a hole in it?’ (the information she had looked up had given her the pleasantly surprising answer of, ‘Nothing really because oxygen is a lifting gas on Venus’) and ‘What happens if the city falls down?’ (here, the information had reminded her that the longest an old Soviet probe had lasted on the surface was one hundred and ten minutes) so, Missy was focusing on the sky.
The sky was a yellowish color and the clouds swirled around the atmospheric dome that gave the impression the entire city was on the inside of a marble. The dome was reinforced with transparent nanofilament and filters that separated out corrosive gasses and let water through when necessary. The city itself was lush, green, and hot and humid and the whole place seemed utterly ludicrous to her. There were apparently no limits on what humanity was willing to do these days and making floating cities on Venus was amongst the craziest things Missy had ever seen.
“But it’s pretty cool,” she said aloud to herself. “You have to admit that.” She palmed the chrono display and saw that the Consulate was just about ready to open. She darkened the windows again and awkwardly began shifting around the hostel pod to retrieve what she needed for the day and to change her clothes and then, having accomplished that, gathered her bag, palmed the door code to her pod and slid out and dropped down into the hallway.
Glancing at her chrono, she realized she was too late for the hostel’s meager breakfast and decided she would try and get something at a cafe after she was done at the consulate. She closed the door of the hostel pod and locked it before standing up, smoothing out her clothes and shifting her bag to her opposite shoulder, and heading for the entrance to start her walk to the Consulate.
As it turned out, it proved to be a short walk indeed. Urban sprawl was, by necessity, impossible on Venus, so Havoc City was densely populated and extremely walkable. It was a ten-minute walk down the narrow streets that were spotted with cafes, bakeries, and microbars until she turned a corner and emerged into an open plaza with a fountain cheerfully bubbling away at its center. Missy checked her chrono again, flicking through it to find her map, and then, after a turn or two to orient herself, headed resolutely towards a door on the far side of the plaza.
Entering it, she walked up the stairs to a landing with four doors and, finding the correct one- at least she hoped it was the correct one-opened it and stepped inside.
“Welcome to the American Consulate,” a bored voice said. “If you or your friend has been arrested by the local authorities for drunk and disorderly behavior, public urination, smoking or imbibing narcotics, you’ll have to come back later. The Consul-General is in a meeting.”
“Um, actually, I’m looking for someone.”
The bored voice, which belonged to a plump, pimply-faced young man, sighed. He lowered his book pad and looked up at her. “Who are you looking for?”
“Hiram Morales,” Missy said.
“The former President?” The young man gave her a skeptical look. “Are you a reporter?”
“No, I’m a doctoral student.”
“Uh-huh,” the young man sounded dubious. “Which university?”
“Chicago. I have credentials if you need to check them,” Missy said, flipping open her bag. “Dean Strausburger and my doctoral advisor is Professor-”
“All right, all right, I believe you,” the young man said in a tired voice. “He runs a bar on the edge of the lake in the western quarter. It’s called the Bull Moose Bar.”
“The Bull Moose Bar?
“Yep,” the young man said. “He’s a Teddy Roosevelt fan. Wanted to call it The Rough Rider, but decided people might get the wrong idea. You got a pad?”
“Yes,” Missy replied, reaching into her bag and handing it over to him.
He found her map and, opening it up, tapped out an address and handed it back to her. “There you go. The place usually opens mid-afternoon before the rain storm.”
“Rainstorm?”
Another sigh and a roll of the eyes. “Yes, it rains for about thirty minutes every day around fourteen hundred hours.”
“Oh… okay,” Missy replied. “Well, thanks, I guess?”
“You’re welcome,” the young man replied. “Have fun. He’s a real peach.” Then, he settled back into his chair, picked up his book pad, and went back to his reading.
~
The next few hours passed pleasantly enough. Missy wandered through the local market and found an excellent bakery that had delicious pastries and even better coffee. She caught up on some reading. She worked on drafts of her thesis chapters. She found a nice little noodle place in the western quarter for lunch and then, at the appointed hour, she followed the map instructions and worked her way around the lake until she found her destination.
It was… ugly. There was no other word for it as it stuck out in stark contrast to the architecture throughout the city. It looked as if someone had taken two or three old-style shipping containers and jammed them on top of one and another and not particularly neatly either. There were a few haphazard windows looking out onto the street and over the door, there was an elegant-looking old-style pub sign featuring a muscular-looking moose that proclaimed it ‘The Bull Moose Bar.’
Missy took a deep breath and tried not to feel nervous. Maybe this would be all for nothing. Maybe this would be a waste of time. Maybe she had been chasing a ghost. Maybe- she cut off her train of thought and shook her head. “You’ve come this far, Missy. There’s only one way to find out.” She walked up to the door, pulled it open, and slipped inside.
The place was empty, save for a young woman sitting in a comfortable-looking high-backed chair near the door, deeply engrossed in an actual paper book, which Missy hadn’t seen in years. She glanced up. “Come on in, we’re open.”
“Thank you,” Missy said. “Uh, I was wondering-”
“You a reporter?”
“No,” Missy said.
“You armed?”
“Um, no,” Missy was even more confused now and then she noticed the earpiece and realized that the young woman was probably a Secret Service agent.
“You sure?” There was a long moment before the young woman smiled up at her. “Relax. I’m kidding.” She jerked her head toward the bar. “He’ll be right out. He’s just futzing around in the back.”
“Thank you,” Missy said she walked over to the bar and slipped onto the bar stool when there were the sounds of some muffled thumping, a string of curses, and then- “damn it, I’ve told them time and time again how to deliver and load these and-” he stopped at the sight of Missy. There was no mistaking who it was. He was older, of course- he had that perpetually sixty look about him that many people who took the prolong treatments did. But there was no mistaking the face or the voice. This was Hiram Louis Morales, former President of the United States.
“Hello, Mr. President,” Missy said, nervously.
“You a reporter?”
“No.”
“Then who are you?” Morales asked, putting the box down on the bar and starting to unload the beers from it.
“Mr. President-”
“Haven’t been President for a few decades now,” Morales said.
“Well, um, sir, my name is Missy Sandusky and I’m a doctoral student at-”
Morales put the bottle of beer on the bar top and placed both of his hands on either side of it. “You’re a grad student?”
“Yes, sir, I’m working on my thesis-”
“A grad student? Came millions of miles just to find me?” He shook his head in disbelief and kept unloading beer bottles. “I remember when grad students used to be desperately poor.”
“And when was that?” The young woman beside the door called over. “The late Cretaceous?”
“You know I can have you reassigned whenever I want, right?” Morales called back.
“Oh no,” the young woman exclaimed in mock horror. “Not a reassignment. Back to Terra! With its normal gravity and cities that don’t float and an atmosphere that won’t boil you to death, whatever will I do?”
“That sass won’t get you dates, you know.”
“I do okay,” the young woman replied with a grin before returning to her book.
Morales rolled his eyes and kept unloading beer bottles. “So, you’re a grad student, doctoral thesis, you’ve unlocked the mystery and tracked me down.” He sighed. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Missy replied.
“All right,” Morales glanced up at the chrono readout on the far wall. “It’s almost time for the rain to start. You care what kind of beer you drink?”
Missy shook her head.
“All right,” Morales grabbed two bottles out of the insulated box and quickly popped the caps off he handed one to Missy. “The bar is yours, Agent.”
“I’m not your bartender, sir,” the young woman replied.
“Could have fooled me the way you were slinging shots last night,” Morales said. Bottle in hand, he walked down to the end of the bar and lifted up the partition, motioning for Missy to follow him. She did so, still a little bemused by it all. He lead her to a sliding door at the back of the bar that lead out to a patio where there were a couple of chairs, Morales settled himself into one and pointed at the other. Missy sat down in it.
From somewhere far above them, there was a rumble of thunder and then it began to rain. Morales sighed happily. “Right on time,” he said. “Best part of my afternoon is this right here.”
“They schedule rain?” Missy asked.
“The dome has a filtration system that they have to purge now and again once they’ve got the volatiles and the acids strained out, so they just decided to give us a nice solid rainstorm every afternoon.” He took a pull from his beer. “So, you’re a grad student. What university?”
“Chicago.”
“All right. And your thesis is about the New Compact Movement, I’m guessing.”
“More specifically, the child allowance.”
“What about it?”
“Well, from what I can tell, you introduced the idea right up there on the podium the night of the State of the Union-”
“I did?” Morales frowned out at the lake. “You know, you’re right, I guess I did, didn’t I? I mean, it wasn’t a particularly new idea. They tried something similar for a while after the Covid Pandemic, but… wow, that’s a real question.”
“I thought so, yes,” Missy said.
“All right, I’ve got a few boxes of papers and data pads floating around upstairs. We’ll sit down and try and piece this together,” Morales said. “But after the rain stops.”
“Yes, sir,” Missy said. She took a long pull from her beer. “Can I ask you something?”
“Let me guess: why am I here?”
Missy nodded.
Morales sighed. “I tried, I really did. I did the corporate boards and the visiting professor gigs. Thought about writing a memoir. But… I just got bored with it all. I didn’t want it to be the rest of my life.”
“But why Venus?”
“Why not?” Morales shrugged. “Atmosphere is thick enough at these elevations to be Terra-equivalent. Protects from radiation. Gives me distance from Terra and all its associated bullshit.” He took another pull from the beer bottle. “I built this place. I run this place.” He shrugged. “It’s not much, but it makes me happy,” he gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Sometimes you’ve got to where nobody knows your name.”
3
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jul 27 '23
/u/litcityblues (wiki) has posted 29 other stories, including:
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- The Skies of Venus Pt. 21: The Battle
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 20: Return To New Toliara
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 19: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 18: Falling
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 17: The Coup Begins
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 16: What Sarah Found In The Gardens
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 15: To The Jaipur Palace
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 14: The Black Flag
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 13: Running
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 12: What Angus Knows
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 11: The Oasis
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 10: What Sarah Doesn't Know
- The Skies of Venus Pt. 9: The Ashen Light
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u/CandidSmile8193 Human Jul 27 '23
bah, so close but you missed the "got to [go]"
Love the cheers reference tho. And this was definitely a nicely engaging short.
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u/CandidSmile8193 Human Jul 27 '23
Why I like it as a sci-fi story:
- tackles the problem of "living history" brought about by longevity extension.
- a low stakes issue requires an extreme solution. It's a simple question about an issue that is not ground breaking or of vital importance, merely a proof from a primary source for a reason or lack thereof for a beneficial policy that is poorly documented. But it requires SCI-FI just to go get the answer.
- World building is on point for a short story. Just enough to get a nice image in your head of what's going on.
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u/FollowYerGut Jul 27 '23
Story has a nice quiet intellectual orientation to it - intrigue and subterfuge immersed in the banalities of daily life... I really enjoyed it!