Between Breath and Awe

U.S. Capitol Grounds Monday, 4 March 2024, 11AM A cold sun shines brightly. The wind, finally, is still. Warm breath fogs service shields. A triangle of hate stalks and shivers. Police in the east. Black Lives on the southeast. TruQ on the northeast. A clenched left fist is held close to a heaving breast, right hand pointing the iPhone camera at the others. A trigger finger itches. Flags hang limp in the depths of the crowds. A phone dings, then...
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U.S. Capitol Grounds
Monday, 4 March 2024, 11AM

A cold sun shines brightly. The wind, finally, is still. Warm breath fogs service shields. A triangle of hate stalks and shivers. Police in the east. Black Lives on the southeast. TruQ on the northeast. A clenched left fist is held close to a heaving breast, right hand pointing the iPhone camera at the others. A trigger finger itches. Flags hang limp in the depths of the crowds.

A phone dings, then another and another. Daring, for the moment, to look away, the message from Xh is revealed.

The Plan requires us
To reclaim America
Death is Essential.

The TruQ look around, turn their phones on their sides and wag them along the contour of infinity, signing X. One, two, three phones. Then five, seven, eleven, thirteen and finally seventeen phones swaying as one.
The trigger finger tightens around its love. The clenched fist rises higher in the bright sun. Tear gas explodes in the eye of the triangle. A police dog snarls, straining for freedom. An AK47 spits thrice. A shotgun responds. Screams pierce the clouded air. Blood anoints the concrete. Another day of death in America.

~~~~~~~

The fall of American Democracy happened more quickly than anyone anticipated. It started in earnest in 2024 and was complete within thirty years. Some scholars posit that the 28th Amendment was an accelerant equivalent in effect to pouring gasoline on smoldering embers. The turmoil of the times overshadowed events in the advancement of Computational Intelligence. The Singularity, predicted for 2045, passed without accomplishment.

The last five of this thirty year period came to be known as the Severance Wars. The North American continent rearranged itself into the New Mexican Republic, West England and the Real United States Still in America. During the Severance Wars Artificial Intelligence was best known and appreciated for its usefulness in fighting cyberwars. When the integrity of the CalCOIN voting system came under attack shortly after the birth of the New Mexican Republic, Frank and Paloma became both the unlikely saviors of the republic and the unwitting gateway to the future.