Bruce Sterling - Distraction

Huey’s favorite proles were native Louisianans, displaced by rising seas, hurricane damage, and levee-smashing floods from the rampant Mississippi. Sinking into the depths of their tattered landscape, the Loui-siana hordes had become creatures of an entirely different order from the scattered dissidents of the East Coast. These Louisianans were a power-ful, ambitious, thriving countersociety, with their own clothing, their own customs, their own police, economy, and media. They could rather lord it over the nation’s less-organized dissies, hobos, and leisure unions. They were known as the Regulators.

Jungle war in the swamps of Louisiana gave Huey’s Regulator nomads a Maoist tactical advantage. Now Huey had unleashed his dogs of netwar, and persistent low-intensity hell was breaking loose around the federal air base.

As was sadly common with American political disputes, the best and most accurate news coverage was taking place in the European media. Oscar located a European satellite feed featuring a Louisiana press conference, held by a zealot calling herself “Subcommander Ooney Bebbels of the Regulator Commando.”

The guerrilla leader wore a black ski mask, mud-spattered jeans, and a dashiki. She stalked back and forth before her audience of journos, brandishing a feathered ebony swagger stick and a handheld remote control. Her propaganda conference was taking place in a large inflatable tent.

“Look at that display board,” she urged the massed cameras, the picture of sweet reason in her ski mask. “Do y’all have your own copies of that document yet? Brother Lump-Lump, beam some more government files to those nice French boys in the back! Okay! Ladies and gentlemen, this document I’m displaying is an official federal list of American Air Force bases. You can grab that budget document off the committee server for yourself, if you don’t believe me. Look at the official evidence. That air base you refer to? It don’t even exist.”

A journalist objected. “But, ma’am, we have that air base on live feed right now.”

“Then you gotta know that’s a derelict area. There’s no power, no fuel, no running water, and no food. So that’s no air base. You see any federal aircraft flying around here? The only thing flyin’ here is your press copters. And our private, harmless, sports-hobbyist ul-tralights. So y’all should can that disinformation about any so-called armed siege. That is total media distortion. We’re not armed. We just need shelter. We’re a whole lot of homeless folks, who need a roof over our heads for the winter. That big derelict area behind the barbed wire, that’s ideal for us. So we’re just waiting here outside the gates till we get some human rights.”

“How many nomad troops do you have on the battlefield, ma’am?”

“Not ‘troops,’ people. Nineteen thousand three hundred and twelve of us. So far. We’re real hopeful. Morale is really good. We got folks coming in from all over.”

A British journalist was recognized. “It’s been reported that you have illegal magnetic pulse devices in your guerrilla camps.”

The subcommander shook her ski-masked head impatiently.

“Look, we hate pulse weapons, they strip our laptops. We strictly condemn pulse-blasting. Any pulse attacks coming from our lines will be from provocateurs.”

The British journo, nattily kitted-out in pressed khakis, looked properly skeptical. The British had larger investment holdings in the USA than any other nationality. The Anglo-American special rela-tionship still had deep emotional resonance, especially where the re-turn on investment was concerned. “What about those antipersonnel devices you’ve deployed?”

“Stop calling them that. They’re our perimeter controls. They’re for crowd safety. We got a very big crowd of people around here, so we have to take safety measures. What? Tanglewire? Yeah, of course! Spongey sticks, yeah, we always have spongey sticks. Foam barricades and the tear gas, sure, that’s all over-the-counter stuff, you can buy that anywhere. What? Superglue? Hell yeah, we got a couple tanker trucks of that stuff. Little kids can make superglue.”

A German correspondent took the floor. He had brought an entire media krewe with him, two bench-ranks of veteran Euro hus-tlers bristling with precision optical equipment. The Germans were the richest people on earth. They had the highly annoying habit of always sounding extremely adult and responsible. “Why are you de-stroying the roads?” the German inquired, adjusting his designer sunglasses. “Isn’t that economically counterproductive?”

“Mister, those are condemned roads. They’ve all been condemned by the State Highway Department. Tarmac pollutes the environment. So we’re cleaning up these roads as a public service. Tarmac is petro-leum-based, so we can crack it for fuel. We need the fuel so our little kids don’t freeze to death. Okay?”

Oscar touched his mute and the video windows in the campaign bus fell silent. He called out, “Hey, Jimmy, how are we doing for fuel?”

“We’re still okay, man,” Jimmy said distantly.

Oscar looked at the bunks. Lana, Donna, and Moira were fast asleep. The bus seemed painfully empty now, like a half-eaten tin of sardines. His krewe was dwindling away. He’d been forced to leave most of them in Texas, and he missed them sorely. He missed looking after his people, he missed cheering them up and cheering them on. He missed loading them and pointing them at something vulnerable.

Moira was fiercely determined to quit, and she was bitter about it. Fontenot was out of the picture for good now; he had dumped his phone and laptop in a bayou and moved into his new shack with a boat and fishing tackle. The Bambakias campaign team was the finest thing he had ever built, and now it was history, it was scattering to the winds. This realization inspired Oscar with deep, unreasoning dread.

“What do you make of all this?” he called out to Jimmy.

“Look, I’m driving,” Jimmy said reasonably. “I can’t watch the news and drive.”

Oscar made his way up the aisle to the front of the bus, where he could lower his voice. “I meant the nomads, Jimmy. I know you’ve had experience with them. I just wondered what you make of this development. Regulator guerrillas, strangling a U.S. Air Force base.”

“Everyone else is asleep, so now you have to talk to me, huh?”

“You know I always value your input. You have a unique perspective.”

Jimmy sighed. “Look, man, I don’t do ‘input.’ I just drive the bus. I’m your bus driver. Lemme drive.”

“Go ahead, drive! I just wondered if… if you thought they were a serious threat.”

“Some are serious… Sure. I mean, just because you’re a no-mad, and you’re on a reputation server with a big trust-rating, and you’re eating grass and home-brewing all kinds of weird bio-stuff… Look, that doesn’t make you anything special.”

“No. ”

“No, but some of ’em are pretty serious guys, because, well, you might bust some homeless loser someday who looks shabby and acts nuts, but it turns out he has heavy-duty netfriends from all over, and bad weird stuff starts happening to you out of thin air… But hell, Oscar, you don’t need me to tell you about that. You know all about power networks.”

“Yeah.”

“You do that kind of stuff yourself, that’s how you got that guy elected. ”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re on the road all the time. You’re a nomad yourself, just like they are. You’re a suit-nomad. Most people who meet you — if they don’t know you like we do — they have you figured for a really scary guy, man. You don’t have to worry about your reputation. There might be some nomad netgods who are scarier guys than you are, but not many, believe me. Hell, you’re rich .”