Ramez Naam - Apex

Showing large swaths of blue down the west coast, across the mid-west, down the north east, in Florida.

The crowd went wild, screaming, getting it now.

“More than eleven million voters attempted to switch their votes to us in the last forty-eight hours! When those voters have their votes counted correctly, as is their constitutional right, as we’re asking the Supreme Court to uphold: WE HAVE WON!”

23

Riot Boy

Tuesday 2040.11.06

“Oh, Jesus,” Oscar said. “It’s a fucking riot.”

“What?” Rangan exclaimed.

“People everywhere,” Oscar said. “Oh hell…”

Rangan pulled himself upright, felt a stab of pain from his rib as he did, and then he saw.

Beyond the windshield the street was full of people, angry people, some waving signs, some chanting or raising fists into the air, others…

Rangan watched a man rise into the air, hanging limply by his neck from a rope dangling from a long pole. His mouth gaped in horror. They were murdering people. And the man’s face looked familiar…

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he heard Oscar say.

The car lurched into reverse, throwing Rangan forward, into the gap between the front seats.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Oscar yelled, seeing Rangan, turning to berate him. “If you can see the windshield–”

The collision alarm cut him off, blaring through the car. The brakes slammed on of their own accord and the car came to a screeching halt, throwing Rangan backwards into the rear seat.

Pain burst through him. He groaned out loud with it. The whole world shrank to the agony in his guts as the deceleration pressed him into the car’s seat.

When he faded back into reality, the first thing he saw was the man they’d hung.

No. Not a man. Something about the way the figure swung back and forth was wrong. The weight was all wrong. The pole hardly bent.

Not a man.

A caricature.

An effigy.

Of John Stockton.

Someone held a flame to its foot as he watched, and the figure lit, fast and bright. The flames spread up the foot, the leg, to the figure’s torso, its head, its arms, engulfing it in seconds.

“Not real,” Rangan croaked in relief. “It’s not real.”

“Fucking real enough,” Oscar replied. He was almost horizontal in the front, his hands buried under the dashboard, digging for something.

Jesus, Rangan thought, he’s got a gun.

Oscar came up with a data fob instead, the kind that went into a car’s nav system.

“We gotta go,” he said. “Get outta the car.”

“What?” Rangan yelled in alarm. Out of the car? “Just drive back the way we came!”

“Look around, asshole! There is no way we came!”

Rangan looked. The riot had engulfed them. He turned left and saw a woman waving a DOWN WITH THE FASCISTS sign. He turned right in time to see a brick fly through a shop window. Rangan craned around backwards and saw… oh fuck.

There was another car behind them. That’s what had set off the collision alarm. A car that had been flipped over onto its back by the mob, who were now slamming bricks and boards and pieces of signs against its windows, trying to batter their way through the Gorilla Glass. In the windshield he saw a terrified face, a middle-aged man in a suit, huddled on what had been the ceiling of his car, his phone in his hand, his face lit by the glow of it. He’d probably been taking his own route around the accident on the freeway. Fuck, maybe he’d even voted for Stan Kim.

“Holy shit,” Rangan breathed.

“Can you run?” Oscar asked.

Rangan waved his arms at the man, trying to catch his attention, saw him take notice.

“Can you RUN?” Oscar yelled.

He pantomimed taking something off, a jacket, off one shoulder, off one sleeve, then the other. Take off the jacket, man. Take off the fucking suit!

The man stared at him blankly. Rangan heard a sound behind him, suddenly found the car more full of light.

Then he realized he was wearing a prop.

He pointed at the man, then pointed at himself, and started pulling off his own hoodie in an exaggerated show. He had the left arm off when the car door to his right opened, Oscar reached in, and grabbed him by the sleeve.

“RUN!!” Oscar yelled, pulling hard on Rangan’s sleeve. His eyes were huge, focused on something beyond Rangan.

Everything happened too fast, then, and too slowly.

Oscar pulled.

Rangan turned, to see what Oscar was staring at, and saw the black-masked figures crouched at the other side of the car, about to lift it up and over. His heart pounded.

Rangan felt the other sleeve of his hoodie yanked off his right arm. He turned back, saw Oscar crash backwards to the ground just outside the car, Rangan’s hoodie in his hands. He saw confusion in Oscar’s eyes, then fear.

Then Rangan felt the car tip up, the other side, the side away from Oscar, rising higher and higher. His open door was suddenly down and it was full of the street and Oscar’s legs and Rangan was sliding towards it. He threw out his own legs and caught himself against the frame of the door.

Oscar screamed, loudly and clearly. Rangan heard it above all the other noise, above the pain in his own guts, above his own fear. He saw the younger man’s legs, mangled as the now half-open car door came down over them.

Rangan threw himself backwards, against the car’s seat, what had once been down, trying to tip it back the way it had come.

Instead he bounced off, came forward onto his face onto the ceiling of the car, as it became the new down, as the vehicle kept rotating, kept fucking rolling.

Oscar screamed, “FUUUUUUUCK.”

And then the scream ended as the car came crashing down to a new horizontal.

Rangan found himself sobbing, sobbing, crawling, knowing he had to move, sobbing, reaching for the door, trying to pull himself out.

Hands grabbed him, hauled him out roughly. His head banged into something as they did. Pain burst through his ribs. The world swam. He heard voices.

“…fucking dead…”

“…accident…”

“…oh shit…”

“…he’s a witness…”

“…just fucking scatter…”

He heard something clatter to the ground next to him.

Consciousness receded.

Rangan opened his eyes, found himself on his back, still here, still where he had been, just seconds before.

Not in heaven, then.

Still in hell.

There was smoke coming from the effigy of John Stockton. Glowing red embers were rising into the night.

They’re beautiful, he thought. A beautiful sight.

Around him, somewhere, there was chaos, distant, horrid, chaos. He didn’t want to go there. He shut it out.

He focused on the sky above, instead. He stared transfixed as the glowing embers rose, higher, higher still, lofted by the warmth of the smoke and fire below them.

Then one by one, as he watched, they died out in the cold air above.

Like Oscar.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Auuuuuugggggghhhh.

A sound louder, deeper, and more painful than any Rangan had ever heard pounded through him, resonating through his bones, his teeth, his bowels. It was like every bass bin of every system he’d ever DJed had been piled atop him, turned up to twenty, and blasted on the same bass line all at once.

Oh fuck that was motivating in the worst fucking way.

He rolled onto his side, curling into a ball, his stomach heaving. Someone fell to the pavement just feet from his face. He barely noticed as his stomach heaved again. He rolled all the way over, just in time, as the lunch he’d eaten hours ago with the boys emptied itself out of him onto the pavement.