“Thanks,” I say, unsure how to take that. Who the hell says greetings?
People who aren't slangy "quirky voice" YA protagonists?
Karen, Panzer, and I fall in behind him. The balcony enters into a lounge area, with low, gray leather seats everywhere, smoky glass and polished steel, a carpet so deep you could drown in it. From there we head into a hallway lit every ten yards with soft sconces of diffuse amber light that splash up the wall and across the pale ceilings. The whole place is like that, sort of a scientifically calibrated luxury, no concessions to tradition, no wood, just the latest and greatest in environmental ergonomics.
This here in particular doesn't feel very neoreactionary. If the name didn't give it away, neoreactionaries tend to look to the past a lot. They often favour older architectural styles and aesthetics. This however, is pure modernist. Sleek and frictionless. Stylish without being at all ostentatious.
Boring. It feels like something your standard tech-billionaire would build. You know, Mark Zuckerberg types who wear jeans and t-shirts and have interviewers film their kids doing kitchen chores just like your children, because modern rich people tend to try and avoid class signals associated with "old money."
Most neoreactionaries don't respect that kind of rich person. They like lords. Aristocrats.
Kings. People who are in charge and aren't afraid to show that off, within the bounds of good taste. When you ask most neoreactionaries what kind of aesthetics they like, they'll probably answer with say, neoclassical, baroque, or even art-deco. They'll talk about how the upper-class traditionally funded gorgeous civic buildings and art as part of nobilesse-obligege. If you gave a neoreactionary infinite money and told them to build a supervillain air, I imagine it'd look like an 18th century reading room writ large. Something like this:
Whereas the space Danny describes sounds more like the sort of thing that would inspire a neoreactionary would write a long, meloncholy, very wordy essay about the airport-ification of public spaces.
“This is a, a nice…boat?”
Panzer laughs. “It’s not a boat!”
Garrison frowns at her. “Lilly, be polite to our guests. She’s never seen something like this before. Almost nobody has.”
Panzer hangs her head. “Sorry, Dreadnought,” she mutters.
“Thank you,” says Garrison. “Now, I can see you’re tired after a big day. Why don’t you go to bed?”
She looks up at him. “But, Daddy—”
“To bed, Lilly.”
Panzer waves at me, and says, “Goodnight, Dreadnought. It was nice meeting you.”
Also, I feel like a neoreactionary should have a bunch more kids, those guys are pretty pro-natalist, at least when it comes to smart people. Lily should be leading a whole weird, monarchist Power Pack.
“She’s not wrong, you know,” Garrison says. “Cynosure is not a ship. She’s a new form of vessel, a mobile seastead, the first of many. We have over forty acres of sovereign, privately owned territory here. We’re totally self-sustaining. Every window you see here is a high-efficiency transparent solar cell. When we come to a resting posture, we’re kept in place by two dozen suction anchors that hold us fast to the mud on the sea floor, and every one of those anchors is topped by a wave motion generator. With new efficiencies in design, we actually start running a surplus of electricity the moment we drop anchor, and that’s projected to hold true even when we’re at population capacity. We make our own fresh water, and we’ve got over fifty thousand square feet of high-density hydroponics bays. We can feed more people than you’d think, and let me tell you, soy is not what it used to be—we’re going to have some turkey sandwiches in a moment, and I defy you to tell me you can taste that they’re vegan.”
You just know Daniels was playing a lot of
BioShock when he wrote this. Though, nicking the visual design of the cities in that would've improved things. Especially Columbia.
“Come on, help yourself!” he says, leading us to the food at the back.
I’m about to speak up and say we’re not really here to be wowed by how neat-o his big floating house is, but Karen brushes past me and grabs a plate. She begins piling food on it with grim, mechanical purpose. I follow suit. Then Garrison leads us to one of the clusters of chairs, and we sit down around the low glass table.
He bites into his own sandwich with gusto, and I’ve got to admit, the tofurkey is not bad. “This was all harvested last week, including the grain for the bread,” he says. “We’ve got plans to expand production soon so we’ll have something to export.”
A neoreactionary soy-boy. Interesting.
Also, why is Danny so bloody jaded? I know I just spent a couple paragraphs critiquing this place's design, but it's still a floating fucking city.
He says this with a look in his eye, like he’s baiting a question. Okay, fine, I’ll humor him. If he can help Karen, he can try to sell me the moon for all I care. “What does a resort need with exports?” I ask obediently.
Garrison laughs. “Nothing! But this isn’t a resort, it’s a country!”
“A country?” Holy shit, I kept a straight face. Cecilia would be so proud.
“Yes, of course! We’re not recognized at the UN yet, but that will come.” He hunches forward at the edge of his seat. “Look, Dreadnought—may I call you Danielle?—Danielle, the nation-state is dying off. Small, privately owned communities in a global network are the future. Out here, we’re free of territorial disputes, of the archaic and rotting Westphalian system—we’ve got a clean slate! There’s no bureaucracy, no handouts, no petulant special interests; it’s the urgent and inevitable path forward for human development, and we’re taking the first big steps here.”
Again, this doesn't sound neoreactionary. It sounds like the ideology of someone who might join the same dissident right Twitter space, but not the same thing. I wish I knew more about weird political subcultures to go into more detail.
“That’s really cool,” I say, and it even sounds like I mean it. The truth is, Garrison’s personal crusade seems like another rich dude’s fantasy of remaking the world so that it will kiss his ass just that much more, and I cannot scrounge up even half a shit to give about this. Not that you’d hear it from my voice or see it in my body language. Hooray for media training! “But, and I hope you won’t mind, I actually came here because I was hoping that you and I could help Karen with her problem.”
I love it when troons pretend like half the reason they've made so many in-roads isn't because a bunch of rich dudes like Garrison didn't get coom-brain themselves. Anyway, it turns out Karen brought Danny here on false pretenses. Garrison already has a cure for her, and it's her payment for introducing him to Dreadnought.
Garrison has reached into his jacket and pulled out a small phone, not a smartphone, but an old-style digital-faced cell. He pushes a single button and speaks into it. “Jonathan, why don’t you come take Ms. Kim to one of the other lounges, and bring her payment with her.”
Even as the words leave his mouth, Karen is standing. Eyes locked to the ground, shoulders tight and high to her neck she marches away. A man in a dark suit, this one buttoned up, meets her near one of the halls away from the lounge and hands her something. I twist back around in my seat to look at Garrison.
“What the hell was that?”
“I really could not begin to say,” says Garrison. He cracks a can of soda and takes a sip. I look down at my own food and suddenly lose my appetite. “Karen came to me in quite a state. We each had something the other wanted, and I offered to make a trade. If she decided to keep you in the dark about our arrangement, well, she’d been on the streets a long time. She might not be very stable anymore. God knows the poor girl has more pressure on her than anyone should have to bear.”
More understandable than... anything Danny has ever done. He's naturally curious why Garrison's so interested in him.
“Aha, yes! To the heart of it!” He shakes his fists with that kind of Silicon Valley excitement that tastes stale everywhere else. “I’ve got a major project in the works, totally world-changing. Cynosure is part of it, but it goes so much further. And I need a spokesperson. Someone with name recognition, someone who’s modern and polls well. What about the world’s preeminent cape? What about the first transgender superhero?”
Still not sounding very neoreactionary. Not because he's apparently okay with the trans thing. Opinions on that kind of thing kind of vary with neoreactionaries. Roko (of basilisk fame) for instance doesn't like troons at all and uses them as examples of negative transhumanism versus "trad-humanism" (using advanced technology to LARP as Victorian gentlepeople or whatever) while Moldbug cheated on his fiance with a trad-Cath TIF who called herself a "eunuch choirboy." My issue is that Garrison is talking like a Netflix executive deciding which
Sandman character to make black today.
What I'm saying is, this book would be
amazing if it was more accurate.
“I’m not,” I say.
“What?”
“I’m not the first transgender superhero. The first was Masquerade in 1959, though she only came out in the ’70s after her retirement.”
I'm curious, did Masquerade fight crime disguised as a woman (shapeshifter/illusionist?) or was he the equivalent of all those veterans who troon out once they leave the army? Did he run a ranch with horribly neglected Skrull-cows?
Karen’s gone; I can’t see her anymore. What the hell was she thinking? And…crap, she spent days with us in New Port, pretending to be looking for a cure. Or was it even pretending? Maybe she was hoping to find an alternative. Or maybe she doesn’t need a cure at all. And what’s so special about a necklace? When I’m done here, she and I are going to have a long, long talk.
Yeah, the payment took the form of a necklace, and apparently Danny--total cape fangirl--isn't familar with the concept of magic jewellery. Despite knowing two wizards.
“So, Dreadnought, will you listen to my proposal?” At least he’s not talking down to me for being young. That still happens sometimes, despite all the footage of me beating the crap out of supervillains two or three times my own age.
“I have a publicist,” I say. “Why didn’t you just call her up and arrange a meeting?”
“I like to do this sort of thing one-on-one, without the help. It builds investment.”
The help, he says. Now there’s an interesting way to describe a woman with degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
We get it, Daniels, Danny's woke. Cecilia is literally Danny's publicist. His employee whose job it is to make his life run a bit smoother. She is in fact, the very definition of "the help." That's only dishonourable if you choose to view it as such. And how many fucking degrees do you need to be a PR agent? I know she doesn't need to sleep, but I think after your second degree in business management you're probably just wasting your time.
“Excellent!” says Garrison, truly excited now. He stands up and punches another button on his phone. A holographic screen pops to life at one end of the room, ten feet high and twenty wide. It’s showing a picture of low orbit, the Earth a slightly curved, fuzzy blue line along the bottom of a star field, a crescent moon hanging high to the left. “Now I’ve got to start with a little bit of background. Since the ’90s, private spaceflight has really taken off. One of my subsidiaries is a pure-science outfit, and they piggybacked an orbital telescope up on one of my heavy-lifter contracts. That’s how we spotted this.”
The screen snap-zooms in on a segment of the sky to focus on a fuzzy blue dot. My blood freezes. It’s the Nemesis. I know it is.
It'd be funny if it was actually Neptune or something.
Garrison doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve gone rigid with shock and prattles on: “At first we didn’t know what it was, but after we consulted with NASA we realized what we had here. When Northern Union went out to stop that asteroid a couple years ago, they were heading off a fragment of this thing. It’s exotic matter, of a sort we don’t really have the science to describe yet. Every three-and-a-half-thousand years it makes a close pass through the inner solar system. It’s also the cause of all superpowers.”
Alright, here we ago. Time to iron this setting flat as a fucking board.
“And you’re sure about this?” I ask. I’m remembering Professor Gothic’s words. You have enemies you won’t recognize until they strike. Without taking my eyes off the screen, I turn my gaze inward toward the lattice. The steel skeleton of the building jumps out at me, pretty standard construction. I don’t see any hidden weapons systems, and Garrison himself reads as thoroughly baseline.
That last detail is going to make very little sense shortly.
“Quite certain,” says Garrison. “We’ve matched up its trajectory with the historical record, and we’re pretty sure this is where the myths about Greek Gods came from. And not just the Greeks, either. Every ancient culture has stories of people or entities with fantastic powers, and many tell of a twilight of the gods or an era when the magic began to fade. Now the hour of the gods has come again.
So, this is basically
Shadowrun, but boring. Also, badly contradicts shit we already know about this world. So, superhumans started appearing sometime around the early 20th century, but things really amped up after Dreadnought 1 got his powers during WW2. Okay. But Val is a something like twelve hundred years old. Ancient, but well after the time of Greek myth. How has her consciousness managed to survive the centuries when Nemesis was chilling outside the Oort Cloud? I assume the Council of Avalon is also pretty old, too.
Another thing, doesn't this kind of render the conflict moot? Utopia and Prof Gothic both seemed convinced reality would breakdown completely once Nemesis got too close, but apparently we made it through the first time just fine. Or are we meant to assume it somehow caused the Bronze Age Collapse?
Garrison proceeds to show Danny a live feed of Lagrange 2 on the dark side of the Moon, where they've basically built a scaffolding around the thing. You'd think someone would've noticed all the space launches, but whatever.
“Obviously she was wrong. Look, I’m not saying there isn’t any danger, but we’ve got it well contained. The quantum destabilization effect of the exotic matter relies on line of sight to operate, and by hiding it behind the Moon we’re able to limit its effects on Earth. My company has satellites in polar orbit of the Moon, monitoring the anomaly and allowing us to precisely control the observer effects.”
“How? Utopia could barely control her fragment.”
Really? The gun seemed to work fine.
Garrison smiles. “We’re cheating. We use magic.”
"Which we now of course know is just superpowers for mentally-ill theater kids."
“The satellite fleet is just a tool to cast spells on a global scale, and Phase One is perfecting a spell to boost the probability curve in certain sectors—in layman’s terms, we’re fudging the dice roll to pick who gets superpowers. Until recently, we thought it was just random chance. A lab accident here, an ancient curse there. Nothing seemed connected, and yet from the very beginning there’s been a suspicion that something was causing all these people with strange talents to show up starting in the late nineteenth century. And for them to become more common and more powerful as time went on? There had to be something connecting them all, right? Now that we’ve definitively concluded that it’s all just the expression of a lot of weird quantum math, we can—and have—systematized it.”
This feels like a very troony approach to magic and high strangeness.
The screen has switched to an animated infographic showing how the cameras near the Moon take observations of the Nemesis. How those observations cause quantum instabilities of a predictable nature. How, by taking advantage of those instabilities, a spell cast from a ritual chamber here on Cynosure gets beamed up to the satellites and then repeated all over the planet. How a single individual can be picked out, and their probability graph pulled way, way up, so that it’s all but guaranteed that by the end of the week they’ll encounter a mysterious woman selling special rings, or experience a non-fatal accident with exotic chemicals, or some other canned origin story.
The magic ring saleswoman reminds me of something that occurred to John Bryne when he was writing the Scarlet Witch. Originally, the Scarlet Witch's power was mostly conceptualised as "causing bad luck." Byrne realised that, in order for her to nudge events in the present, she logically had to rewrite the past to accomadate them, making her extremely powerful. In that spirit I have to ask, does Nemesis cause the hypothetical ring-lady to just spontaneously appear from the either, or does she have a history stretching back to the beginning of time like everything else that exists? Because if it's the latter, it shouldn't really matter how close Nemesis is to the Earth, because its effects would be felt all throughout spacetime.
Honestly, there's not nothing to this concept. Lots of superhero stories feature mad scientists or other characters that sell superpowers. Usually it involves dosing you with strange chemicals or exposing you to weird radiation, but the idea of a probability-manipulator who just increases your chance of having an origin story in the near future is actually quite clever. It's just... do we have to reduce all magic and wonder to "weird quantum math" like God is a woman who watched
What the Bleep Do We Know? It oddly enough reminds me of creationists who try suggesting that Moses "parted" a shallow, salty marsh and not the actual Red Sea. If you're going to make it that lame, why even bother?
This is…huge. Bigger than I thought possible. Utopia’s failed plan to turn everyone into software she could control suddenly seems like it lacks ambition.
“Our initial calculations were pessimistic by an order of magnitude,” says Garrison. “We’re not only able to pick who gets superpowers, we can even pick roughly what sort of powers they can get. Further refinements are on the way, but this is really just a means to an end. Ask yourself, what are the implications of being able to pick and choose—?”
Then why the fuck are you still a baseline human? And why is your daughter wired up to a bunch of guns and shit and not Winter Moran with hopefully more clothes?
Danny asks if Nemesis can only grant so many people powers over a certain period of time, and they're just deciding who, or if they could turn as many people they want into supers. Garrison confirms it's the latter.
I look back at him, excitement blooming in my chest. My smile isn’t media-ready armor anymore, it’s real, and growing. “We could give everyone in the world superpowers, and we could do it in a safe and controlled way.”
Garrison’s smile falters a little bit. “But, well that would almost defeat the point, wouldn’t it? I mean, what’s the point of powers if they’re common?”
“No!” I shake my head. “You’re wrong. It’s not like we’d all have the same powers, right? We’d all have something unique that we can do. We could let people pick what they want, be whatever they chose. We don’t have to wait for the Nemesis to do it naturally; we can do it right now! Look, I absolutely do want to be your spokeswoman, okay? Of course I do, this is huge! But if we’re going to do this, we need to do it for everybody.”
This feels we're having the wrong argument. Or rather, it's an argument worth having, but one side is written by an idiot with an axe to grind about rich people. I'm very much in favour of like, the idealised idea of transhumanism where we uplift the whole species, but there are plenty of valid arguments against giving everyone on Earth superpowers.
I'm sure all of you reading are familiar with Krypton, Superman's home planet. Most of you probably also know that Kryptonians only have Superman powers when exposed to Earth's yellow sun. Krypton had a red sun, so its people were pretty much identical to humans in their capabilities at home. What some of you might not know is that this wasn't originally the case. In the early years of the comic, Kryptonians were just more "highly evolved" than Earth people, and thus were stronger, faster, and smarter all the time, no matter if they were on Earth or Krypton. In fact, in the first episode of the 1950s
Adventures of Superman show, we actually see Jor-El Superman leaping his way to the Council's (there's that word again) meeting place. It's goofy as all hell.
However, that was when Superman was a much less powerful character than he is today. An exploding mortar shell would in fact break his skin. He couldn't even fly. As his powers grew, people started questioning why Krypton exploding didn't just leave a lot of confused Kryptonians floating unharmed in the vacuum of space. Another issue was that it was becoming to imagine what a civilisation of such physically powerful beings would even look like. Imagine if every bar-fight resulted in a
Man of Steel style swath of destruction. Now imagine everyone in that city has a different set of powers, some of which don't include invulnerability.
This also feels like a very trans-coonsomorist way of looking at it. "Everyone gets to pick whatever powers they want!" Infinitely customizable bodies. Except, are you really going to give anyone who asks telepathy? Or Chlorophyll's Rohypnol pheromones? Hell, wouldn't you look sideways at someone who asked for Wolverine claws? I'm guessing Daniels is in favour of gun control, so you'd think he'd see the parallels. Although, I guess he could be one of those "disarm cops, arm transwomen!" type gun-troons.
Overall, I think I lean more towards Danny's side of things (and would be very interested in seeing your thoughts on the matter, good readers) but there's a lot of nuances to consider. Except we don't get to do that, because Daniels just has her self-insert's opponents arguments be rooted in pure, naked elitism.
arrison purses his lips. “You’re picking up on this quickly, so I think we can skip ahead to some of the more advanced material in the presentation.”
“There’s more?”
“Oh yes. You see, this is Phase One. It’s the big one, but this is a holistic project—we’re not stopping there. There’s a lot of problems we’re going to solve.” He shrugs. “All of them, more or less. And like in any great undertaking, we’re going to make enemies.” Garrison pauses, seems to calculate some odds. He pulls out his phone again. “Peter, would you come in here? I think maybe Dreadnought could use your perspective.”
A discreet door in the side of the room opens, and out steps Thunderbolt. Electric thrills go up my spine. He’s one of California’s premier heavyweight superheroes, and would likely be the head of his own team if the cape laws in California weren’t so screwed up.
NIMBYS, ruining everything! Are you really telling me California was like "no, superheroes don't get to work together" and the heroes
listened? Losers! Fucking losers!
“Can I call you Danny?” he asks, and I nod because of course I do. I wonder if it’d be too dorky to ask for an autograph. “Good. Danny, I think you’ve been in the game long enough to notice some of the problems with how superpowers currently work.”
“Uh, I guess? I don’t really know what you mean.”
“Well, for one, most people with powers are in the closet about it,” says Thunderbolt. “It’s all special ability this, peculiar talent that. They might use it for a job—a job!—or just to dick around, but they don’t really get the most out of it.”
The fangirl blush fades a little. “I guess I don’t really see the problem. My job is super dangerous; not everyone wants that kind of life.”
Again, there should be loads of rich and famous supers who aren't heroes. They'd probably have their own sports leagues. Of course, then a bunch of idiots who think ADHD is a form of psychic power would capture all our institutions and make them let in baselines, but that's besides the point.
“But you want it, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. New Port kinda needed me. Even if I didn’t like it, I’d probably still do it.”
“But you do like it, don’t you? It’s okay to say you do. I love it,” says Thunderbolt, putting his hand to his chest. “And if someone wants to stay conventional and safe, they can do that. But isn’t it kind of a waste for them to have their powers, if that’s what they want?”
Wait, are you telling me the baddies think only
superheroes should have powers? You'd think they'd be more in favour of a Plato's
Republic sort of set-up, where people get powers suited to their station and function in society, and "superheroes" are either philospher-kings or Spartiate warrior-aristocrats.
That sounds off somehow. But it’s hard to put my finger on why. In fact, it sounds a lot like what I’ve asked myself when I saw people with powers who were obviously more interested in blending in than standing out. So maybe I’ve never called it a waste. But still. Why settle for normal when you can do the kinds of things that I can do? Hell, look at Calamity, she’s barely superhuman, and she’s still way cooler than basically anyone else in the city. “I…I guess. I mean, waste is a strong word—”
“—but you see what I mean, right?”
“I think I do.”
Um, Danny, if nobody but superheroes get powers, who do you think you're going to vent your bloodlust on?
Well, what we’re going to do is remove the random chance from who gets powers and who doesn’t. Only people who want them—and who’ve earned them—will get them. The best people should have the best powers. No more supervillains, and no more slackers. That’s what Phase One is all about, and everything else flows from there.”
“What’s Phase Two?” I ask. My trepidation grows.
“That’s not ready to be revealed yet,” says Garrison with an even look at Thunderbolt.
There's a term in Mormonism called "milk before meat." It's the idea that the nice young men and women who keep knocking on your door should lead with the less... outlandish aspects of their faith when trying to attract converts. You know, Jesus Christ spent some time in America, there's another testament of the Bible. Probably not the easiest sell, but not
too out there. Then, once they're already balls-deep in your religion, you explain that the endgame is for you to ascend to godhood and populate a planet by fucking your spirit-wife. That's also why the Scientologists were so pissed about the Xenu shit becoming public knowledge back in the day. You're not supposed to learn about that until you've invested a lot of time, money, and emotion in the church.
What neither of those groups do is immediately inform you there's a Secret Second Phase they're not going to tell you about, while they're trying to recruit you.
Thunderbolt dips his head and moves away from the topic. “Right now, there’s no efficiency to how superpowers are allocated. A market-based system would be vastly superior, and Richard already showed you how we’re going to bring some creative disruption to that problem. But more important is what it means for the wider world. There’s a lot wrong with the world these days. We’re at a—what’d you call it, Rich?”
Neoreactionaries aren't usually that fond of capitalism, either.
An inflection point of history,” says Garrison. He sips his soda.
“Right. The old world is rotting. There are too many problems that are going unaddressed because of special interests and small-minded politicians. And it’s not just in government; the West’s culture is sick too. Flabby mediocrity is the order of the day. We’re raising generation after generation to believe that the worst thing you can do to someone is offend them. We’re told to pretend that everyone is equal, but excuse me, some of us can fly! Excellence isn’t celebrated anymore, and it’s suffocating humanity.”
Can't say I disagree with that premise.
Garrison chimes in, “I started homeschooling my daughter because the other students were taught it was okay to shame her for using her powers. They get scared because she can do things they can’t, and so they expect her to stifle herself simply because of their cowardice. And this was at a so-called elite academy in Zurich. It’s like that all over now.” The way he says this makes me think he’s voiced this complaint before. A lot. “There’s no escape. Someone does something outstanding and they get shouted down for not being fair to the people who can’t.”
Wait, Lily's a super? I thought she just had a lot of guns and gear? Or is that the point, that Garrison is convinced the school should've let Lily bring her arsenal with her? If so, it would've been actually interesting if Lily was a natural superhuman, and Garrison had developed a complex from people treating his kid like a walking time bomb for something she didn't choose.
“Right!” says Thunderbolt. “And that’s who they care about. The people who can’t. There’s no concern anymore for the people who can, the people who do. They’ve murdered the meritocracy! No civilization can thrive if it insists on strangling its best members. We can take the best lessons of history, and abandon the failed ideologies that got us here.”
My enthusiasm has completely drained away. This conversation has more red flags than the Chinese Embassy. Cecilia’s media training is in full effect, and I crack a soda of my own to cover my unease. After a sip, I ask, “Which ideologies are those?”
Garrison and Thunderbolt trade a look. It seems to say well, it’s now or never.
Thunderbolt looks at me and says, “Democracy.”
Are we talking about actual democracy? Or the system where occasionally "experts" bless us with a study confirming men aren't actually taller than women on average, and then we get called chuds for thinking that's bullshit?
“Look, I know that’s kind of a lot to take in, but you adjusted to having superpowers,” says Thunderbolt. “I haven’t had the pleasure of working with you, but the capes you’ve fought with who I talked to speak very highly of you. They say you get it, that you’re understanding your role almost instinctively. Now take that shift of perspective to its logical conclusion. Democracy is the political form of equality. One man, one vote, that sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh,” is all I can muster up to say to that.
Thunderbolt rolls on like he’s making perfect sense. “What’s equality, really? It’s make-believe. Not everyone is equally strong. We’re not equally fast, or equally smart. Some of us are geniuses. Some of us are retards. There’s no magic quality we all share equally, nothing that really makes us the same—I mean, come on, who are they kidding? But our obsession with pretending that everyone is equal—or worse, that everyone should be, no matter the cost—has bogged us down as a culture. We’re not all the same. We’re not all equal, and we never will be. That’s why communism didn’t work. And that’s why democracy is falling apart too. Now, don’t misunderstand, we’re not against freedom. We’re the most pro-freedom people around, including the most important freedom, the freedom to rise as far and as fast as you can, without worry about what the flabby mediocrity thinks is polite. And that’s a pretty big thing to say, these days. I know, I know. It sounds crazy, but we’ve got to face the facts as they are.”
Why even keep "phase two" secret if you're just going to immediately start calling people retards in front of this trans zoomer?
Despite Garrison’s plan of having another cape introduce this to me as a way to get me on board, he doesn’t seem to be able to help himself from butting in. The words seem to erupt from him, like a bark of pain after a struck nerve. “We’ve got swarms of refugees in Europe. Recessions in America. Who’s doing well? The Chinese. They don’t give a shit about being PC; they just get things done. That’s what radical inequality does—it lets the cream rise. The people at the top have the resources to set their own path in life, and the people at the bottom get some sort of structure and guidance, which, if the feckless corruption of the Western democracies is any guide, they sorely need.”
At this point we're just throwing every right wing ideology and talking point into a pot.
We’re trying to create a new society here on Cynosure,” says Garrison. “We’ll be a model to the rest of the world, combining the best in modern thinking with the most timeless and enduring human wisdom.”
“Like what?” I ask. I think Thunderbolt is twigging to the fact that they haven’t made the sale, but Garrison is still so euphoric after coming out of the closet as a fascist lunatic that he answers without hesitation.
“Hereditary dictatorship. It’s the oldest form of government, and when left alone, the most stable. We’ll have the best and the brightest living in luxury, not just here, but in seasteads all over the planet. Hierarchy is natural. It’s healthy. Why do you think people love stories about kings and queens so much? They’re yearning for the past. They want to pay us tribute. Aristocracy means rule by excellence, and that’s what we’ll be—the excellent, trained from birth to excel, leading the mundane. Trust me, Dreadnought, when they see the benefits of going back to the old ways, they will beg us to save them from themselves, and we will be happy to oblige.”
“No, you won’t,” I say. Garrison’s train of thought derails and he stares at me, confused. I clarify for him: “Because I’m going to beat the shit out of you instead.”
This all feels very... rushed. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Garrison and co. had contacted Danny a lot earlier, and taken more time bringing him on side? Then, when they think Danny's basically already come around to their way of thinking, reveal their actual plan for civilisation.
Wait, sorry, that would take time away from Danny fretting about employment contracts and... well, we'll get to it.
Danny tries to fight Thunderbolt, but not only does he have electrical powers, Danny soon finds his own powers are gone. It turns out Garrison can mute them.
Garrison is crossing the room, pulling his rings off. “I told you my own power wasn’t very impressive. And it’s not. Power is about change, and mine are more the creation of absence. But I find that there are many places where a carefully considered disruption is more useful than anything else.”
Garrison’s first punch lands like the end of the world. It hurts so much. I’ve been shot, and it didn’t hurt that much. My head swims. My lip stings.
“I’m disappointed in you, Danielle. Here I thought you could overcome your degeneracy. You seemed bright, at least.
Well, we know Garrison isn't a very perceptive man.
I could have made you rich. I mean true wealth, not that chicken feed the city is paying you. But more than that, you could have been in on the ground floor of the next evolution of humanity. For the sake of pragmatism, I was even willing to overlook your gender issue, since you seemed different from the rest of the filth.” More punches. Thunderbolt is watching from the side, his face hard.
Of course Garrison hates trans people, because God forbid one of Danny's enemies be so because of philosophical and not personal reasons.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” It’s Karen. She’s standing at the hallway, aghast, terrified.
“Get the fuck out of here!” shouts Thunderbolt. “You got what you came for, now go!”
Karen turns and runs, and Thunderbolt goes after her.
Garrison grabs my chin and forces my attention back on him. “We’re going to rule this planet like gods. The peasants will know their place, and we will have the worship that is our due. Governments will tremble to defy us, and all the world will be ours, as is right. You could have been one of us, and you spit in my eye.” He spits in mine. “She was right. You’re just another degenerate, after all.”
Do I even need to tell you that "she" is Graywytch? Because as we all know, everyone who doesn't like you is on the same team.
