Paul Di Filippo - After the Collapse

Only fitting, since Austin was nowadays an integral if non-contiguous part of Agnostica, an azure island in the crimson sea of Faithland.

Batch Gertslin possessed a somewhat moony face, shadowed by a messy thatch of black hair and generally expressive of an amiable curiosity and frisky intellect. But now he was definitely irked.

“Amy! You’re bringing the ceiling in my office down!”

Batch Gertslin was a freelance ringtone, screen-wallpaper, emoticon and dingbat designer, and worked from home.

Amy pretended not to hear. “What?!”

“Turn that music off!”

Batch’s face was shading into purple—a nice bi-national mix of red and blue, actually—and so Amy dropped her pretense of non-comprehension. A flick of her tongue against her Bluetooth dental implant controller deactivated the iPod. Her earbuds resumed their default task of ambient sound enhancement and noise filtering.

Batch’s face regained a measure of composure and normal coloration. “Thank you. Listen, Amy. Your mother and I don’t ask very much of you. You’re almost an adult, we realize, and deserving of being treated as such. For the most part. But this senseless caterwauling has got to stop. It’s most annoying.”

Amy felt her own face coloring now, heating up with anger. “‘Senseless caterwauling!’ You’re talking about some of the greatest music ever made! The music I love!”

Batch advanced into the room, holding out his hands in a paternally placating gesture. “I know you don’t like any of the music your mother and I enjoy, Amy. That’s only natural between generations. After all, you weren’t raised on classic acts such as Eminem and Linkin Park and Ol’ Dirty Bastard the way your mother and I were. Those old-school performers and their modern heirs are just not for you.”

“Damn straight! You know I hate all that emo-crunk-harsh-metal shit! Classic country-western is my zome!”

“Fine, fine. But why do you have to favor the, ah, more downmarket acts in that genre? Couldn’t you at least try some of those other artists I’ve suggested. Lyle Lovett, k. d. lang, Alison Krauss—”

“Oh, Dad ! You’re making my neurons go all apoptosis! Those wimps, those feebs, those posers, those zygotes ! Charlie Daniels would eat them all for breakfast and still be hungry enough to swallow Shania Twain whole.”

Batch assumed a dreamy look. “Shania Twain. What a hottie. Now there was a singer….”

“Ugh! Dad, I promise not to rattle the plaster anymore. Just leave me alone now. Unless you had something else to say—”

“I do. Your mother wants you downstairs now to help with dinner.”

“Why can’t Hilary do it?”

“Your little brother is busy studying for his Virus Construction finals. And besides, he helped last night.”

“Arrrrgh! Okay, I’m coming!”

Batch left, and Amy waited the maximum amount of time before she knew she would receive a second notice to show up in the kitchen. Only then did she grudgingly tromp downstairs.

Phillipa Gertslin stood by the methane-fueled gas range, stirring a pot of free-range-turkey chili. Phillipa’s parents had been —still were—a famous team of young-adult writers, whose current series—involving a budding teenaged paleontologist trapped by accident of birth into an intolerant Faithland community—was a best-seller all across Agnostica. They had named their daughter in honor of Philip Pullman and his quintessential Agnostica fictions.

This evening Phillipa wore loose white cotton trousers and a plain black short-sleeved cotton top. For the nth time, Amy sized up her mother’s slim figure, wondering if her mother’s decidedly non-voluptuous shape was to be her lot too. Why couldn’t Philippa Gertslin have had an endowment of Dolly Parton magnitude to pass on to her daughter, or at least one of Shelby Lynne proportions? Oh, well, Amy would just have to go in for an outpatient boob job when she came into her majority next year.

“Mom, you look like some kind of robot sushi chef! Don’t you ever feel like glamming it up a little?”

Phillipa regarded Amy’s own embroidered red synthetic shirt, rhinestone-studded denim pants, and hand-stitched cowboy boots with a barely concealed distaste.

“You know I don’t believe in regional fashions, dear, however ironically worn. Clothes are critical signifiers. I don’t want my outfits proclaiming some false allegiance to Faithland, of all places.”

Phillipa Gertslin taught popular culture at Howard Zinn University—what used to be known as UT Austin, before the Agnostica-Faithland split. Her last published book had been titled The Hermeneutics of Hypocrisy and concerned itself with the frequent preacher sex scandals that continued to plague Faithland at regular intervals without, inexplicably, managing to undermine in any way the basic beliefs of the heartland.

“Now, please,” Phillipa continued, “if you could just set the table without offering any more fashion critiques…? I’ve got to nuke these duck tortillas.”

Grumbling, Amy took down a stack of four clunky, hand-fired plates from the cupboard. Each plate weighed as much as brick.

“Why can’t we get a set of those faunchy e-paper plates? The ones that let you eyeball content while you eat?”

“Paper? I’d rather eat off the backs of exploited migrant laborers. Who knows what horrid toxins might leach out of that e-paper? It’s only been around for a couple of years. I know the government says it’s safe, but I hope you realize just how far you can trust our elected officials—even our Agnostica politicians need to be kept on a short rein”

Amy set the weighty plates down on the table with enough force to have shattered a lesser vessel. “And that’s another thing. How come you and Dad are always talking trash about our government? Whatever happened to, like, patriotism in this house? ‘Agnostica Number One! My half of the USA right or wrong!’”

Phillipa dumped a bag of blue-corn chips into a handwoven Guatemalan basket and carried it to the table. She looked at her daughter as if Amy had suddenly sprouted bat wings. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. You know that no one in Agnostica talks or thinks that way. It’s only in Faithland that you’ll hear people shouting those mindless chants. Our mode of government is based on rationalism and skepticism. It’s only through constant questioning of the empirical that—”

Amy rattled a tray of silverware to cover the sound of her mother’s voice. “La, la, la, la! Can’t hear the semiotic discourse!”

Phillipa didn’t pursue the argument, but just frowned and shook her head, then went back to her meal preparations.

A short time later, the Gertslin family assembled for their evening meal. From his seat across the table from Amy, her brother, Hilary, sneered and said, “Hey, shitkicker, pass the tortillas.”

Hilary was a smart, wiry tweener who, unlike the others in his family, boasted a natural skin coloration the shade of a dusky plum. Hilary had been adopted by the Gertslins when he was just months old, an African child orphaned during the post-Mugabe chaos in Zimbabwe. He was as much a product of Agnostica as Batch or Phillipa, even down to his given name. Hilary had been named after the politician Hilary Clinton, who, during the year of little Hilary’s birth, 2010, had been elected the first president of Agnostica.

Batch objected now to his son’s language. “Hilary, I warned you about using that form of address.”

“Aw, Dad, it’s a compliment. Isn’t that right, Amy? You’re proud of being a country girl, aren’t you? Barefoot and pregnant all the time? Double-wide trailer living? Coon -hunting? Am I right?”

Amy shoved her chair backwards and stood up, stiff as a vibrating board. “That did it! I don’t have to sit here and be insulted! None of you understand me at all! This bleeding-heart family sucks! This tight-ass city sucks! This whole peachy, super-sensitive, liberal country sucks!”