Barry Eisler's Blog: The Heart of the Matter, page 2

Recommended: "Why Mearsheimer Is Wrong on China"

Let me start by noting that I’ve never been a fan of debate as an efficient way to get to the truth. It’s typically two opponents (either singly or in teams), each motivated by the desire to win and make the other side lose. A format built on motivations like that is as likely to produce truth as a machine built to produce heat is likely to produce light. Some, maybe, but if illumination is really the point, all that heat is at best inefficient. Personally, I’d rather watch an MMA match. It’s less pretentious.

Much better than debate is discussion. That is, a conversation between two people who see a topic differently and are interested in exploring the foundation of their differences. This format is rare—almost unheard of on the Internet!—and it typically requires maximum erudition, minimal ego, and mutual respect.

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With all that as prologue, I highly recommend this thoughtful, respectful Substack article by Arnaud Bertrand, “Why Mearsheimer is Wrong on China.”

John Mearsheimer is a rightly lauded professor of political science at the University of Chicago (who also has a Substack page) and one of the foremost proponents of the Realist school of foreign policy. His prescience on topics like NATO expansion and the destruction of Ukraine is in my experience unparalleled.

(Here I must pause, Montie Cranston style, to salute whoever decided to call the Realist school the Realist school. I myself have learned a lot from Realist scholars like Professor Mearsheimer and Harvard professor Stephen Walt (here’s my review of Professor Walt’s excellent book The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy). But however realistic it might or might not be, it’s a great product name. Who doesn’t want to claim the mantel of realism? It’s like the New York Times saying about itself “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”)

And Arnaud Bertrand, the author of the article I’m recommending, is an entrepreneur who in addition to his native French speaks idiomatic English and Chinese (and probably other languages I don’t know about). He lived for eight years in China, and his ability to explain the country’s history and culture to outsiders is Tiresias-level insightful. Also he obviously has outstanding taste in fiction, because he had some exceptionally kind things to say about my latest novel, The System. :)

I got so excited by Arnaud’s article and its implications about the role of human nature and culture in great power politics that in addition to writing this post, I left a long comment. For anyone who’s curious, the comment is here.

Oh, and for another example of a discussion about China with an exceptional light-to-heat ratio, here’s a video of Professor Mearsheimer and Columbia University Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, who’s nonstop advocating for global sanity makes him in my eyes almost a modern-day bodhisattva.

Well, that’s a long enough intro. I’ll only add that for anyone interested in China specifically, great power politics generally, and the role of human nature and culture in all things, Arnaud is someone to read and savor. And his terrific article on Professor Mearsheimer is a great place to start. Enjoy.

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A Tokyo Romance

Ian Buruma's Behind the Mask was one of the seminal books (along with Nicholas Bornoff's Pink Samurai and John David Morley's Pictures from the Water Trade) that fueled my fascination with Japan, and A Tokyo Romance is a fine follow-up/companion. Unlike Behind the Mask, which is a relatively detached though still passionate examination of the bizarro world of Japanese sexual mores and related topics, A Tokyo Romance is a personal story--the story behind the study, I think you could say.

Buruma is always an engaging guide, and his insights and enthusiasms, now tinged with a touch of nostalgia and the patina of experience, has the eternal outsider's gift for seeing, and presenting, what insiders are too close to perceive. Part of the tragedy of being human, as Kierkegaard said, is that "Life Can Only Be Understood Backward, But It Must Be Lived Forward." Regardless of whether you love Japan as I do, this book is a beautiful example.

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An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions

This past April, I attended a talk by David Zweig hosted by Lee Fang, a journalist I follow here on Substack. I hadn't heard of Zweig's book An Abundance of Caution, and TBH given the subject matter I was expecting something of a dry presentation.

It was anything but.

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With passion, humor, and tremendous insight into human nature, Zweig laid out the evidence not just for what had gone so horrifically wrong in the American response to Covid, but also why. None of it was judgmental or accusatory; instead, though there was some righteous anger in the mix, it was clear Zweig had no interest in finger pointing and instead was driven to depict and document what had gone wrong only to improve the odds of getting things right next time.

I’ve now finished listening to the audio version of the book and it completely tracks with what I learned at the April book talk (the narrator, Jonathan Yen, is also great). Multiple aspects of the American pandemic response—most of all, school closures—were the result of panic and magical thinking, and willfully ignored voluminous evidence from other similarly situated countries (and even similarly situated American states).

Years ago I read about how, when planning a mission, the Pentagon determines the minimum assets and conditions needed to proceed. For example, planners might determine that four helicopters is the minimum; fewer than four available means an automatic order to abort. So if the mission starts with five and loses two to equipment failure or whatever, the mission is automatically aborted. These decisions are made in advance because planners have learned from experience that on the day of the mission, with substantial resources invested and everyone’s blood up, it will be tempting to revise the minimums and proceed based on new assumptions. These on-the-fly approaches are unduly dangerous and tend to result in failure and unnecessary suffering, or worse.

Which is not a bad summation of what happened in response to Covid.

What might therefore help for next time would be a checklist, prepared before panic starts its caustic work on reason--a checklist against which policy proposals can be evaluated. This book is filled with them: as just one example, the notion that before changing a policy such as "kids attend school," the proposed new policy must be based on actual evidence, not on vague wishes. I therefore hope it will be widely read by anyone likely to be involved not just in future pandemic responses, but in any significant policy undertaking.

I also hope the book’s publisher will consider a more compelling cover. I think I understand why they went with what they went with—it’s a photo of an empty classroom, with semi-transparent plastic and cardboard screens separating each desk from all the others. But especially at thumbnail size (which is the size anyone buying in an online store will see), it’s not easy to see what’s depicted. I initially thought it was voting booths or something. And even if you can immediately understand the image, it’s inert. I know the point is that the classroom is empty, but humans are wired to care more about humans than about rooms, and I think something that more actively and intimately portrays a critical theme of the book—we conducted a vast, harmful social experiment on our children—would more effectively communicate that this book is anything but dry and technocratic. The experiment didn't make children disappear, as suggested in the cover photo; in fact it made them suffer unnecessarily. I'd welcome a cover depicting or suggesting that.

I offer this feedback to the publisher as someone whose own books have occasionally been saddled with inert and sales-deadening covers (if you’re curious, search for “Barry Eisler Connexion Fatale”). This is an extraordinary book and deserves to be packaged in a way to appeal to the widest possible audience.

I know "must-read" gets overused, and maybe I'm guilty of the overuse, too, because I'd use the same description for Scott Horton's "Provoked" and for Annie Jacobsen's "Nuclear War: A Scenario." But if you'd like to see better policymaking in the future, especially when the stakes are highest, then yes, An Abundance of Caution is indeed a must-read.

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The Constitution is Toilet Paper

Under the Constitution (and as expanded on in the Federalist Papers) the president cannot unilaterally take the country into wars. That's a power for kings (see Federalist 69) and so the framers deliberately vested the power to declare war with Congress (Article I, Section 8).

But the way the question of war with Iran is discussed would be no different if Article I, Section 8, didn't even exist. Which means that functionally, it doesn't. On arguably the most important power of all, the Constitution is just a piece of paper for the president to wipe his ass with.

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THE SYSTEM, Out Today!

Thrilled to announce that my 19th (!) novel, THE SYSTEM, is out today! It’s available in digital and trade paperback, and though the audiobook (narrated by me) was also supposed to be here today, it seems there’s been some delay, which should be sorted out shortly.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I’m launching the book tonight at Kepler’s in Menlo Park. Swing by at 6:00 pm for a signed copy and to support your local bookstore.

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What’s THE SYSTEM about? I’m glad you asked:

A riveting exposé of the inner workings of American power—as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat .

Valeria Velez has just pulled off a stunning upset in California’s 27th District, ousting ten-term corporatist incumbent Fillian Dunne from his seat in Congress. Young, beautiful, and idealistic, Valeria and her boyfriend/campaign manager Preston Jante are determined to use Valeria’s new position to “stop stuffing the maw of the military machine” and return power to the people. But when fugitive hacker Lance Thaddeus uncovers a top-secret Pentagon program combining artificial intelligence with nuclear command-and-control, Valeria might have to choose between her ideals…and her life…

And even while trying to navigate the unfamiliar pathways and temptations of American power, Valeria will have to contend with a mother still frozen by bitterness about the past, a brother jealous of Valeria’s future, and the ghost of the father who abandoned them all and then died before Valeria could even begin to understand his reasons.

But as Valeria will discover, in the world she has entered, personal and political can be meaningless distinctions. There are no solutions, only trade-offs, and as Valeria negotiates with the factions holding real power in America—Wall Street, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley—the lines between compromise and capitulation, savvy and sell-out, player and played, become increasingly hard to see, with ultimate stakes not just for Valeria, but for the very future of constitutional democracy in America.

The real-world basis for THE SYSTEM is documented in my extensive footnotes, which you might find interesting even independent of the novel. And here’s a bit more about the story’s origins:

The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it. The real world.

—Blade.

Before going on to make a living as a novelist, I spent three years in a covert position in the CIA. At the time, I had a typically skewed understanding of how power is exercised in America, both domestically and abroad. But as I learned more about how, why, and by and for whom power in America is really wielded, I began to realize that the world I’d always believed in was, as Blade put it in the eponymous movie, “a sugar-coated topping.”

Flash forward to the last eight years or so, a time during which the phrase deep state (or call it the military industrial complex, the administrative state, the bureaucratic state, the blob, etc) has become en vogue not just on the American left, where it first gained currency, but in the wider discourse, as well. To which my response is:

What took you so long?

And thus THE SYSTEM, which represents the culmination of all I saw of the culture of the deep state during my time with CIA; my understanding of the real nature of American power as shaped by years of obsessive reading, writing, and speaking on the topic; and everything I’ve learned about the craft of storytelling from over two decades as a novelist and screenwriter.

THE SYSTEM is something of a departure for me. For one thing, while the story has all the sex, it’s driven less by killing. Its fuel is more the crooked timber of humanity mixed with the kind of power that shapes all our lives today. In this sense, I suppose you could say THE SYSTEM is a bit more serious than my other books (though the Livia Lonenovels all deal with human trafficking—hardly a frivolous topic). Luckily there’s no inherent contradiction between delicious and nutritious, a case I once made in an article for NPR about Orwell’s 1984—a novel that can be read as a terrific thriller but is of course also far more. And while THE SYSTEM is certainly political, it isn’t partisan. In fact, I call it post-partisan, because it reflects my view that Dem/GOP and left/right are increasingly counterproductive ways of accurately understanding how power in contemporary America is really acquired, expanded, and exercised.

It’s been said that the best detective novels are about not just how the detective works the case, but how the case works the detective. Similarly, on a dramatic and human level, THE SYSTEM depicts not only what America’s system of power is and how it functions, but also what it does to its members—how it warps their outlook, their ideals, and their values the more they advance within it.

Or, to quote Nietzsche, “When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you…”

Valeria Velez is about to gaze into the abyss of American power. THE SYSTEM depicts what happens when the abyss gazes back.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Best,
Barry

* * * * *

“A devastating depiction of power in contemporary America, stunningly rendered through the lens of an idealistic politician determined to use her new position in Congress to make the world a better place—and who discovers that the first offering demanded by politics is principle, with far more consequential sacrifices to come. The System is as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat, and best of all, it offers us a view not only of the workings of the game it depicts, but roving access to the minds and souls of the players, and the pieces, caught up in it. I love this book.”

—Blake Crouch, bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“The System is the real deal: smart, stylish, and riveting. But it’s also much more: by subjecting Washington’s sordid underbelly to careful scrutiny, Barry Eisler performs a much-needed civic duty. At a time when American democracy is genuinely at risk, this is the book to read.”

—Andrew Bacevich, Co-Founder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of The Age of Illusions

“In The System, Barry Eisler brilliantly demonstrates how the traditional left/right divide masks the true workings of power in America, crafting a work of fiction that paradoxically provides the most honest portrait of the country’s political reality I’ve had the pleasure to read. This book could spark an important public conversation—and I hope it will.”

—Arnaud Bertrand, entrepreneur (founder of HouseTrip and MeAndQi.com) and writer on international relations

“A searing, frighteningly prescient indictment of Washington power games and the modern machinery of the national security state.”

—Lee Fang, Independent journalist

“The System depicts a fictionalized version of the late US Empire—an economic and military juggernaut now in terminal decline as the regime and its institutions buckle under the weight of their own corrupt and corrupting inertia. With compelling prose, Eisler has written a deep political thriller in which the characters exist in shades of gray. They all must accommodate various governmental and private sector interests in such a way as to become complicit in a system so illegitimate that its true dimensions cannot be candidly discussed or explained in “mainstream” settings. Let us hope that entertaining fiction like this can help snap Americans out of their red/blue partisan trances and unite them against their real enemy—the oligarchic regime itself.”

—Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

“The charade of American democracy is well understood by Barry Eisler, and the cast of scheming characters in The System magnificently reflects the shadowy techno-feudal world that defines so much of our lives whether we consent to it or not.”

—Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of The Dissenter, author of Guilty of Journalism

“The System is a literary hat trick: a gripping thriller; a steamy love story; and a compelling depiction of how power is really exercised in America. In addition to his own CIA experience, Eisler has clearly done his homework on the incestuous workings of Congress, the Pentagon, and Silicon Valley, and his latest reads like a secret glimpse not just behind today’s headlines, but behind tomorrow’s, too. I hope we’ll see much more of Valeria Velez as she navigates her Faustian advance through Congress specifically, and within the system at large.”

—Ryan Grim, Drop Site News, author of The Squad

“Caught in the incestuous maze of Silicon Valley Big Tech and Washington DC’s cutthroat bureaucracy, newly elected Congresswoman Valeria Velez risks her conscience, political future, and possibly her life to uncover the truth about an ultra-secret Pentagon plan to reshape nuclear command and control. Demonstrating the exceptional knowledge of politics, combatives, and spy tradecraft for which he is known, CIA veteran Barry Eisler artfully weaves together a steamy love story and provocative commentary on the workings of American power. The footnotes alone were fascinating. I couldn’t put this book down and I’m already pining for a sequel.”

—Daniel Hoffman, former CIA three-time station chief and senior executive Clandestine Services officer

“The System is a rare and refreshing novel that tells the truth about government’s position within our society. Rather than a mythological force for good that is tragically corrupted by money, ideology, or authoritarian personalities, Eisler shows in clinical detail that the government is fundamentally a system of power and control that corrupts everything and everyone who interacts with it.”

—Scott Horton, author of Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine and Director of the Libertarian Institute

“Barry Eisler is a master of cut-throat crime and espionage capers, but The System takes on what might be the nastiest arena of all: the double-dealing and infighting of politics in Washington, D.C. Can an idealistic first-term Congresswoman outplay lobbyists, the Pentagon, and shady political “consultants” without losing her soul (and maybe more)? Sprung from tomorrow’s headlines and deeply researched, The System is a wildly entertaining page-turner as well as a cautionary tale about how national security policy really gets made—and for whom.”

—Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, author of The Hell of Good Intentions

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THE SYSTEM Chapter 5

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 4 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out tomorrow—Friday, June 6th!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

* * * * *

Chapter 5

Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.

—John Dewey

Valeria sat in the hushed Tyson’s Corner Ritz Carlton conference room, all wood-paneled walls and thick carpeting and stylish leather furniture. Dennis’s restaurants were high-end, but it was one thing to work in a place, another to be served there, and she was anxious. She took a sip of coffee from a delicate porcelain cup and had to admit it was delicious—though how much of that was the coffee and how much the presentation she wasn’t really sure.

Preston, sitting next to her, was looking left and right as though anticipating an ambush. “I don’t like it,” he said. “We should have just met at Dunne’s office.”

“I told you, he said we could. But he thought we’d be better off keeping this meeting private.”

Preston threw up his hands. “I don’t even understand who this guy Cranston is. There’s almost nothing about him on the Internet. Plus Dunne acting like he’s your new BFF, and setting up a meeting at this fancy hotel, which by the way is totally not in keeping with your brand—”

“Fillian said Cranston doesn’t advertise, so—”

“When did he become ‘Fillian’?”

“Preston, we beat him, okay? He’s finished. We can afford to be magnanimous.”

He shook his head and looked away.

She waited a beat, then leaned closer and whispered, “You know you’re cute when you sulk.”

It was true, too. He had such beautiful lips, and when he pouted it always made her want to take advantage of him.

He looked at her sidelong. “You’re bad.”

She put a hand on his thigh. “I noticed there’s a lock on the door.”

“Uh-huh. And what are we going to tell Dunne and Cranston when they get here?”

“They’re political people. They’ll be late.”

“And if they’re not?”

She let her hand drift higher. “I’m a congresswoman-elect. They’ll wait.”

He shook his head. But she could tell he wanted to, and it excited her more. “You know I could order you,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And you’d have to do whatever I tell you.”

He glanced at the door. “Come on, we can’t.”

She was totally turned on now. She stood and went around the table. “Val, this is crazy,” she heard him say.

She locked the door, then came back and stood behind him. “Face me.”

He spun the chair around and looked at her. He was flushed.

“Scoot down in that nice leather chair. And open your pants.”

“Val—”

“Stop wasting time,” she said, breathing hard. “Do as I tell you.”

He glanced at the door again, then eased his hips forward and unbuckled his belt. A moment later his pants were around his thighs, his erection straining against his boxers.

She bent her knees and reached under her skirt. Moving even a little she could feel how wet she was.

Preston was past protesting now. He slid his boxers down. She hooked her thumbs inside her panties, lowered them until they dropped, and stepped out of them. Then she raised her skirt, straddled his thighs, and took hold of him. He gasped.

“Shhh,” she whispered, pressing her fingers against his lips. “You have to be quiet.”

She guided him slowly into her. He moaned beneath her fingers and pushed up with his hips.

She paused and pressed her fingers more firmly against his mouth. “No. Hold still. Stay just like that.”

He moaned behind her hand and settled back into the seat. Staring into his eyes, she eased down again, then up a little, then down again, then more, until he was fully inside her. She waited a moment, still staring into his eyes, then started moving, relishing the feeling of having him under her control. She could feel the breath whistling out of his nose past her fingers and hear his soft groans and it was so hot, so fucking hot, she loved having him like this, making him do exactly what she wanted and how she wanted. And she loved that he loved it, too.

She could tell from his eyes that he was already close. “No,” she cooed. “Not yet, baby, you’re not allowed to come yet. Not until I tell you.” She started rubbing hard against the spot over his pubic bone, the way she needed to get off. He grunted and she knew it was hurting him but she rubbed harder, faster, and she felt her orgasm rolling in and she heard herself saying Good, okay, like that, yes, yes, yes, and she felt him coming and then she was coming, too, and she grabbed the back of his head and closed her mouth over his and sucked on his tongue and rode him the way she needed to and came and came and came.

When it was done she collapsed against him, and they stayed that way for a moment, foreheads and noses pressed together, catching their breath and laughing softly. She could feel a trickle under her thighs and was glad they had switched from condoms to an IUD. Maybe it was Pavlovian, but she loved that wetness afterward, and the accompanying sensation of him softening inside her. There was something so vulnerable involved, as though he wasn’t just spent from their lovemaking but was actually dissolving from it. It made her feel responsible for him, protective, and so achingly tender she could almost cry.

The handle of the door clicked against the lock. Preston froze under her. “Shit,” he breathed.

There was a knock. She jumped off Preston’s lap, snatched her panties from the floor, and pulled them up. Preston dragged his pants back into place and buckled his belt.

She walked quickly to the door and looked over at Preston: We good? He raked his hair back and nodded.

She smoothed her skirt, and then, trying to ignore the stickiness between her thighs, unlocked the door and opened it. There was Dunne, holding a briefcase and a Starbucks coffee awkwardly in the same hand. He raised his eyebrows. “Thought I had the wrong conference room.”

“Oh,” she said. “We just . . . you made it sound like it would be better if we kept this meeting private, so . . .”

She realized if he asked, Then why would you open the door without asking who’s there?, she would have no good answer. For a second she felt sure he knew, that they’d been busted like a couple of horny kids. But no, probably she was being paranoid. Preston’s influence.

“Absolutely,” Dunne said, walking in. “With a little privacy, you can get away with all sorts of things in this town.”

Valeria sensed he was suppressing a smile, and instantly changed her mind about being paranoid. Well, fuck him if he has a problem with it. I’m the congressperson now. She closed the door and went back around the table.

Preston stood and offered a hand. “Congressman.”

Dunne set down his bag and coffee and shook Preston’s hand. “Not much longer,” he said with a chuckle. “Thanks to the two of you.”

Valeria was surprised his tone wasn’t at all bitter. If anything, it was . . . buoyant. Her mind flashed to an O. Henry story she’d read as a kid, The Ransom of Red Chief, about a child so obnoxious that when he’s kidnapped the parents are actually relieved.

Dunne took a seat across from them. “Montie’s running late,” he said. “A meeting at the Department of the Interior. That oil spill off Louisiana.”

Valeria had seen something about a Gulf spill on the news, though reports were vague. “How bad is it?”

Dunne shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, it’s going to be classified as an SONS—a Spill of National Significance. Like the Deepwater Horizon incident. But in the end, still just a spill.”

“Can I ask you something?” Preston said.

There was a pause. “Sure,” Dunne said.

Preston’s tone had been notably direct, and Valeria thought she knew where he was going. But she didn’t like the timing any more than the tone.

“We appreciate that you want to keep the NGAD program in Palmdale,” Preston said. “And we’re looking forward to meeting Cranston and hearing your thoughts on strategy. But—”

“You want to know why I’m dealing in Valeria.”

It was as Valeria had thought. She and Preston had talked about Dunne’s motives. But she hadn’t expected Preston to bring it up so soon, or so abruptly. Was he trying to catch Dunne off guard? Did he feel protective of her immediately after their lovemaking?

Preston nodded. “Pretty much.”

Dunne looked at Valeria. “You want the truth? Or the whole truth?”

She smiled, hoping it would obscure her irritation with Preston. “Does anyone ever answer that question other than ‘the whole truth’?”

“No,” Dunne said. “But I like to offer the option.”

When she didn’t answer, he said, “The truth is that as I’ve told you, I want to protect those jobs.”

“Really?” Preston said. “I mean, ultimately those people voted you out of office. Why do you care? I think most people would enjoy the schadenfreude, a little How-you-like-me-now? fuck-you laugh.”

She and Preston had used exactly those phrases when they’d been trying to divine Dunne’s motives—and one more, too, a flip of the bird as you ride off into the sunset. But that was when it was just the two of them. What was the point of being so aggressive about it to Dunne’s face?

Dunne looked at him. “I don’t know which of those people voted for Valeria and which voted for me. I do know none of their kids voted at all. Would you prefer that I punish everyone just to get back at whichever people were foolish enough to vote for the wrong candidate?”

Valeria smiled at the way he put it. “So what’s the whole truth?”

Dunne shifted his gaze to her. “The whole truth is that if you’re not part of the package, Valeria, I have less of a chance of selling it.”

“Why? What do I have to offer?”

“Here’s the good news,” Dunne said. “The Pentagon takes you seriously. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have moved the program, which is about punishing you. The bad news is the way they take you seriously. They see you as a threat. So you need to make nice with them. Show them you know when competition should give way to cooperation.”

“Cooperation?” Preston said. “No. You mean cooptation.”

Jesus, Preston, ease up, we can read between the lines, you don’t have to call him out every time—

“This move isn’t about the program,” Dunne said, ignoring Preston’s jab. “It’s about Valeria. And Valeria, if you don’t make nice with the Pentagon, then no matter what else I can put together to get the decisionmakers to see the error of their ways, my chances of getting them to keep the program in Palmdale are much lower.”

For once, Preston held back, and for a moment they were all quiet. Valeria said, “What if the Pentagon doesn’t want to play nice?”

“We’ll cross that bridge if we have to,” Dunne said. “But if we don’t at least try, the program is gone. And five thousand jobs gone with it.”

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 4 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out tomorrow— Friday, June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s tomorrow— Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

THE SYSTEM Chapter 4

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out Friday, June 6th!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

* * * * *

Chapter 4

If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?

—Edward Bernays, Propaganda

Montgomery Cranston walked into the Department of the Interior conference room expecting the customary confusion. Instead, he found chaos.

A dozen officials were milling around the room’s long, rectangular table, all talking over one another, the resulting bedlam causing everyone to shout to try to be heard. He caught fragments of multiple conversations twisting together and then unraveling in a cacophony of controlled panic: Emergency disconnect system . . . blowout preventer . . . backup shutdown failure . . .

Some of the faces he recognized—officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and of course various bureaus of the Interior Department itself. But he didn’t see who he was looking for.

“Who is OEPC here?” he called out. But no one heard him, it was too loud and they were all too focused on themselves trying to be heard. Even in the best of times, humans liked talking more than listening. More than they wanted to understand, they needed to feel understood.

“Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance,” he called out, louder this time. “Who represents the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance?”

The cacophony abated a little, as he had hoped. A petite woman with a strained expression walked toward him. “I’m the OEPC representative,” she said. “Julia Hoang.”

The woman’s nervousness agitated him, and he could feel his body wanting to rock back and forth. But he didn’t let it. His parents had taught him that repetitive behaviors like rocking made humans uncomfortable.

“What happened to Menders?” he said.

“He’s with BSEE now.”

“Isn’t BSEE here, too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Cranston blew out a breath. If no one had thought to include an official from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, they were really in disarray. Well, at least someone had thought to call him.

He turned back to the assemblage. “Who here knows that questions have a pitch different from those of assertions?” he called out.

The yammering flickered more. Then, as people realized that others had stopped talking, it guttered entirely.

“That’s why you heard me,” he went on, no longer needing to shout. “It wasn’t my volume so much that reached you as it was the tone of a question. On top of which, questions tend to engage people. Either they know the answer and want to share it, or they wonder if they know, which gets them to pause and think. Regardless, paradoxically a question can be a good way to get someone to stop talking, if only for a moment.”

They were silent now, staring at him as though he had suddenly sprouted antennae. It was okay. People had been looking at him that way for as long as he could remember.

“My name is Montgomery Cranston, and I’m here on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior, who has asked for my assistance in coordinating our response. If you’ve seen with your own eyes what we’re dealing with, please speak up.”

A bearded man in oil-stained coveralls said, “I seen it. And then some.”

Cranston would have made the man as a roughneck even without the coveralls. It was his size, his solidity. And the indentation around his hairline, left by a hard hat he must have worn almost constantly and probably felt half naked without.

“What’s your name?”

“Grove. Mark Grove. Toolpusher on the rig.”

“May I call you Mark?”

“Sure.”

“It’s good that you gave your name, Mark. It’ll make you feel more responsible for the accuracy of what you report. And my calling you by your first name will help make you comfortable talking to me.”

Grove frowned. “What?”

“I’ve been informed there has been an incident at the Yamaloka oil-drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana. What happened?”

Grove stared at him. After a moment, he said, “We don’t know exactly. Right now, it looks worse than the Deepwater Horizon disaster—”

Cranston shook his head. “Not disaster. Everyone knows what the Deepwater Horizon was. No need to embellish or otherwise characterize.”

“Whatever. All the redundancies we put in place following Deepwater Horizon seem to have failed. There was an explosion, we think of a methane bubble, and the rig sank. We lost six men and personally I think we were lucky not to have lost more.”

“Don’t say that. The rig didn’t explode and sink. That’s not helpful.”

“You got mud in your ears? I just told you—”

“It collapsed. You say the rig collapsed. If you say it blew up, you create scary images—bombs, terrorists, Nine-Eleven. By contrast, small things collapse, and when they do, it’s discrete. For example, ‘Grandma passed out and collapsed.’ There isn’t any fire or smoke. Better imagery for us.”

Grove looked left and right as though seeking reassurance. But everyone in the room was as nonplussed as he was.

“Fine,” Grove said after a moment. “The rig collapsed. And somehow this collapse tore a huge fucking gash in the seabed, and—”

“Please don’t swear. Swearing is unprofessional, and public confidence depends to a significant extent on our appearance of professionalism. This is why Transportation Safety Administration personnel wear their distinctive blue uniforms.”

Grove stared. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. People have tried to teach me, but I don’t know how.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not a joker.”

“I don’t know how to joke, either. Do you see that as I describe how to proceed, I’ve been using the plural pronouns we and us? In other contexts, this could be called forced teaming, which is bad, but here it fosters cooperation and a sense of common purpose.”

Grove scrunched up his face and slowly shook his head. Cranston recognized the meaning: What the fuck? Still, that Grove hadn’t voiced the sentiment was evidence of progress. The man was struggling to keep up overall, but at least the admonition against profanity was sinking in.

“In addition to not swearing,” he went on, “we need to steer clear of words like gash, which has connotations of violence and blood. Also we need to be careful of adjectives like huge. In fact, I don’t want us using adjectives at all. They make it sound like we’re trying too hard. We’ll manage this story with two well-chosen words: leak and spill.Now, Mark, can you tell me how much oil is leaking?”

Grove stared at him for a moment, then said, “Have you seen the underwater imagery? It looks like Mount Vesuvius erupting oil out of the seabed. Our best guess at this point is at least 60,000 barrels a day.”

Cranston wanted to explain to Grove that words like erupt and imagery like Mount Vesuvius would be perfect if they were trying to cause damage rather than perform damage control. But he suppressed the urge. Humans learned in different ways and at different rates, and sometimes correcting a person too much too quickly could be counterproductive.

“That’s not good,” Cranston said. “We can’t say that, at least not right away.”

“Well, it is what it is.”

“We don’t know what it is. You just said yourself that you’re guessing. We’ll start with a low number—let’s make it a thousand barrels a day.”

“Look, you can’t just say it and make it so. There’s—”

“Isn’t it true that the leak includes a thousand barrels a day?”

Grove snorted. “Yeah, and another 59,000 barrels on top of that.”

“We don’t have to mention the second part. Not yet. In fact, doing so would be irresponsible because as you just pointed out, we don’t really know. We’re guessing. So I want us to guess lower.”

“Guess lower?”

“We’ll start with the lower number to ease the incident into the public’s consciousness. Once they realize there’s a spill, we can gradually walk up the number without unduly upsetting people. We’ll be sure to use the word estimate in connection with all numbers. That way, we’ll have the necessary flexibility to increase the numbers as we gain more information.”

“I don’t understand what difference any of this makes,” Hoang said. “We’re not the ones who are going to control the words used to describe this . . . incident. The media will call it whatever they want.”

Cranston looked at her. OEPC would be spearheading media outreach. He wasn’t completely surprised that someone this inept had been put in charge—it was hardly the first time. Well, hopefully she wasn’t ineducable.

“Why do you think that?” he said.

“Well, I mean, it’s not like we can control the media . . .”

“Control isn’t a good word. It sounds totalitarian. Persuade is better.”

Hoang shook her head. “Come on, whatever you call it . . .”

“I called it persuasion when I got the media to refer to the people we were holding at Guantanamo as detainees rather than prisoners. Detainee is much better, wouldn’t you agree? Students get detained for failing to turn in their homework. Nothing to get excited about.”

The room had gone silent, and he went on. “And have you noticed that the media has dropped assassinations and now uses the soothingly dry phrase targeted killings, instead?”

More silence. “The Rules-Based International Order,” he said. “Useful when actual international laws are inconvenient because who could be against order and rules? But really it means the U.S. government makes the rules and gives the orders.”

They were staring at him again, but in a different way now. Their silence no longer felt skeptical, or even quizzical. More like a door that had opened.

“Nor is it a coincidence that America doesn’t do invasions, only interventions. Which don’t inflict casualties but only produce collateral damage. Also not a coincidence that if you’re against interventions, you must be an isolationist. And no one wants to be an isolationist. Because generally humans fear being alone.”

He realized he’d slipped saying humans instead of people. His parents had taught him not to refer to the humans that way because it made them uncomfortable. But this time, no one seemed to notice. A few people chuckled, even though he’d already told them he didn’t know how to joke.

There were so many more fascinating examples he might have shared. But he sensed they already understood about as much as they would be able to.

“All right,” Hoang said. “But how do we stop it?”

They all looked at him expectantly, even Grove.

“I’m sure there’s a way,” Cranston said. “Remember, it’s just a leak.

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out Friday, June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s this coming Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

THE SYSTEM Chapter 3

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

* * * * *

Chapter 3

Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

—Frank Zappa

Valeria was flopped on her back on the living room couch, so exhausted she was almost paralyzed. Preston lay parallel on the floor, holding her hand. It was two in the morning and the party had still been going strong when they’d left. Valeria didn’t want to seem ungrateful by heading home early, but at some point she realized no one was going anywhere before she did.

“Oh my God,” she managed to say.

Preston chuckled. “Shit got real.”

“A little too real. Pentagon pricks couldn’t give us one night to celebrate?”

“Look at it this way. If they weren’t lashing out, it would mean they’re not afraid of you. If they weren’t afraid of you, it would mean we’re doing something wrong.”

She supposed that was true. It was a high-profile upset—certainly the biggest in this election, maybe among the biggest ever. The press was going nuts over it. And she’d received so many congratulatory texts she’d given up on even trying to skim through them, let alone responding. She had managed to talk briefly with her mother and brother. Both had been effusive. But as was often the case, Josie’s glee at Valeria’s successes didn’t feel only like vicarious pride, but also like some instrument of proxy revenge against Héctor’s ghost. And Mateo was also true to form. He’d made some of his usual cracks, the humor of which was never enough to completely conceal an underlying tinge of envy or resentment.

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, she thought. But she pushed the family shit away. Tonight was hers and Preston’s.

“Pres,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “When you convinced me to do this . . . did you really believe we could win?”

“One hundred percent. Didn’t I say so?”

“Well, you said, but . . .”

“What about you?”

“Maybe . . . one percent.”

He laughed. “If you’d really thought only one percent, we never would have made it. I think you believe in yourself more than you realize, Val.”

She squeezed his hand. “You make me believe.”

She remembered how he’d first suggested it, at Gamble in Santa Monica, Dennis’s first restaurant. Their romance had kindled over a common passion for politics, but their activism was limited to volunteering for a few local candidates and a single fizzled presidential campaign. Dennis wanted to open a new restaurant in Antelope Valley, where real estate was cheap and the local food scene less competitive. One night, unwinding over a drink at the bar after closing time, Preston told Valeria they should move to Lancaster and she should run for Fillian Dunne’s seat.

She’d laughed at the absurdity. Everyone knew Fillian Dunne was unbeatable. In the last three elections, he’d been returned to office with something like eighty percent of the vote. He had a campaign budget bigger than the GDP of small nations, and ruled California’s 27th District like a king from an impregnable castle.

“That’s exactly what makes him vulnerable,” Preston had said. “It’s not just everyone else who thinks he’s unbeatable. He thinks so, too. He’s like a champion who hasn’t been challenged, hasn’t had a real fight, in years. He’s complacent. Out of shape.”

She’d laughed again, but he wouldn’t let it go. “He won’t take you seriously,” he said. “He’ll look at you and see a nobody from Pacoima, barely dry behind the ears. A bartender, for God’s sake. Yeah, he’s got a war chest, but he won’t touch it. He won’t think he needs to, and besides he wants to save it, because if he becomes Speaker of the House as everyone expects, he’ll need the money to run for president against Whetter. Conventional armies have lost to guerillas plenty of times, Val. You could beat him.”

Like Dunne, Ben Whetter was another ten-term corporatist, and as devoted a servant of the Pentagon as could be found in Congress. Widely considered to be another possibility for Speaker, he was also expected to be one of Dunne’s primary opponents in the next presidential election.

She thought he must be drunk. “Why don’t you run?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I don’t have star power.”

“Please. Like I do.”

“Don’t say that. That’s the only thing holding you back. You don’t see the way customers look at you. And it’s not just because you’re beautiful—”

“You don’t have to butter me up, Pres. You know when we get home I’m going to do you anyway.”

He laughed. “I’m not trying to butter you up. You don’t get the way people respond to you. You’re smart and passionate and fast on your feet. People are going to see you, and they’ll be attracted to you because you’re a beautiful woman but also a beautiful person. And they’ll want to be in your orbit, and they’ll want to follow you. And when they respond to you that way, it’ll increase your confidence, and . . . you’ll grow into what they see. And they’ll love you more and you’ll become more worthy of their love. It’ll be a virtuous cycle.”

For whatever reason, the flattery—or whatever it was—had made her nervous. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “I’m definitely not letting you drive home in this condition.”

“I’m totally serious, Val. I don’t have your charisma. Even you don’t have it, not yet, not all of it. But I see things you don’t. About you. About Dunne. I’d be a good advisor. And campaign manager. We’d be such a good team.”

“Why not just stay here in Santa Monica and run against Luiz? It would still be hard, but not as impossible as against Dunne.”

“No, that’s the whole point. Hard is impossible. Impossible is opportunity.”

She laughed. “My campaign manager, Yoda.”

“Luiz doesn’t think he’s invulnerable. He’s wary. He thinks like a junkyard dog guarding his territory. Dunne thinks like a king. His eye is on other realms, not his own provinces.”

“Well, you come at the king, you best not miss.”

During the campaign, it had become a refrain for the two of them. Will this approach work? How devastating will it be? Could it backfire? Because if you come at the king, you best not miss.

Well, they hadn’t missed. But the Pentagon seemed intent on making her wish they had.

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

THE SYSTEM Chapter 2

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what’s actually going on.

—Julian Assange

Tara was peeking through the venetian blinds again and Thaddeus was getting pissed. “Do you have any idea what that looks like from outside?” he said.

She glanced at him and tilted her head as though he was being ridiculous. “No one’s out there, Lance.”

“Then why are you looking?”

“Because this room is boring.”

It was always like this right before a big upload. She’d pretend to be tired of the whole thing, dance right up to the edge of his security precautions and sometimes even past them, and then they’d finish the upload and be so turned on by the risks they’d just taken and the rush of completion and the friction of all the half-fake, half-real animosity that had been building up between them that they’d fuck like wild animals. And it was hard to say which was more of a turn-on, what they’d just done or the possibility that the FBI might kick down the door in the midst of the proceedings.

“It’ll be a lot less boring if we’re getting arrested in it,” he said.

“At this point, I think I’d take it. Can you even remember where we are?”

“Kentucky. Lexington.”

“What motel?”

That one took him a second longer. The muted sounds of nearby Interstate 75 helped—he remembered seeing the sign from the highway the night before.

“Comfort Inn,” he said. “And before that, the Holiday Inn Express in Indianapolis. And before that, the SpringHill Suites in Schaumburg. I told you, it has to be this way for a while.”

The heat kicked on with a clang and they both jumped. She shook her head. “It’s always going to be this way.”

“Only until this batch of burners and laptops is spent. Then we can go anywhere you like. Someplace warm. San Diego. Honolulu. Okay?”

She turned back to the window.

He let a second go by, then a few more, trying to stay calm. Finally, he said, “Surveillance could see a venetian blind being parted from anywhere in that parking lot. You’re making it easier for them to see us than it is for us to see them.”

“I told you, no one’s out there. And if I’m wrong, I’ll spot them, too.”

“How does a fucking tie work for us?”

She flicked the blinds hard. The plastic rattled. “You’re an asshole.”

He shut the laptop. “Are you trying to distract me?”

She turned toward him, crossing her arms and deepening the cleavage already showing in the V-neck of her tee shirt. “Yeah, everything is about you.”

He knew she was baiting him, which on the one hand was irritating, but on the other hand God he loved it. She was only twenty-two, but so fucking smart. And passionate. And stubborn. Everything between them was a battle. Covering up her tats when they were out, because they were too noticeable and memorable. Ditto losing the electric-pink dyed hair and the clothes that revealed too much of her insanely voluptuous body. It wasn’t just him she liked to provoke, either; it was everybody, though the good news he supposed was that when she couldn’t provoke anyone else, she directed all that energy to him, and the only thing she seemed to enjoy more than bucking his authority was giving in to him once he’d made it plain that he knew better. Maybe one day she’d feel confident enough to dump him and go off on her own, find another revolution to join, another guy closer to her age. He was almost thirty, and though the gap would matter less with the passage of time, he gave himself only a four percent chance of making it to forty. Neither of his parents had made it that far, but he doubted it would be genetics that did him in. The opposition he’d stirred up was far more dangerous than biology.

“You want to do something by that window?” he said. “Help me set up the satellite router. Then come over here and let’s upload the latest batch. And then watch the reactions.”

Her arms were still crossed. She was doing it on purpose—she knew her rack was spectacular. “Oh, you know what I want, do you?”

He felt himself getting hard. “If it’s the same thing I want.”

She made him wait so long he almost thought she was going to say no. But then she gave him a sexy smirk and started pulling the equipment out of her backpack.

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

THE SYSTEM Chapter 1

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

* * * * *

Thanks for reading The Heart of the Matter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

It’s a big club—and you ain’t in it.

—George Carlin

Chapter 1

The object of power is power.

—George Orwell

The restaurant was small, and the packed crowd was cheering with such abandon that Valeria couldn’t hear the reporter’s question—even though the woman had yelled it only inches from her ear.

“I’m sorry?” Valeria shouted, her own words barely audible over the din.

The reporter leaned closer, taking care to keep her microphone between them. “How does it feel?” she hollered, louder this time. “Can you describe what you’re feeling right now?”

The cheering cohered into a chant—the campaign slogan, magnified by hundreds. Let’s do this! Let’s do this! Let’s do this!

Valeria glanced at the television monitor set up on the bar. The CNN chyron read, Valeria Velez Stuns Fillian Dunne, Will Represent California’s 27th District as Youngest Woman in Congress.

The networks were calling the election.

It shouldn’t have been a complete shock—Preston had been saying for a week that it wasn’t even close anymore, but that if cable news acknowledged it was already over, their viewers would drift away like fans before the fourth quarter of a lopsided football game.

Still, it didn’t seem real.

The crowd was stomping now in time with the chant. The floor shook. LET’S DO THIS! LET’S DO THIS! LET’S DO THIS!

“I’m just—” Valeria started to say, but it was no good, her people were too loud, and besides, she didn’t know what she was feeling right then, let alone how to describe it.

And suddenly the stomping and chanting were dying down. Valeria looked over and saw why: Preston, ever sensitive to an opportunity to cultivate the press, had jumped on a chair and was lowering his extended arms like a conductor signaling the orchestra to ease off the fortissimo. He grinned at Valeria and shook his head: Can you believe this?

No, she thought. I can’t.

But his smile gave her confidence, the way it always did.

“I’m sorry,” Valeria said. “Can you tell me your name again? So much going on.”

“Jocelyn. Jocelyn Slater. Gamut News.”

“Jocelyn,” Valeria said, leaning closer to the woman’s microphone. “Right. Well, I feel encouraged. Because if a little campaign like mine can do this, then America can do anything.”

Don’t let them make it about us, Preston liked to remind her. It’s always about your constituents. The people. The country. They want to talk personalities. We talk principles.

“Even overcome racism and misogyny?” Slater said.

From the beginning, the press had tried to frame the contest as young Latina versus old white guy. Valeria wasn’t going to take the bait.

“I based my campaign on economic policies,” Valeria said. “Class policies. I promised voters I would fight for those policies, and now that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Slater gave an almost imperceptible worth a try shrug, then turned to her cameraman and pulled the microphone close to her own mouth. “And there you have it. Valeria Velez, the unknown thirty-year-old bartender from Pacoima, defeats Fillian Dunne, ten-term incumbent, favorite of Santa Clarita business interests, and until tonight the likely next Speaker of the House. A David and Goliath story if ever there was one. Valeria—or should I call you Congresswoman—what kind of stones were you throwing from your sling?”

Valeria almost offered up the rote campaign answer—the determination to be a voice for the voiceless; to make the American Dream available for everyone; to take back government of, by, and for the people. All of which was true, of course, but suddenly she felt inspired by something different.

“You really want to know?” she said, stealing a quick look at the camera lens, giving herself an extra moment to consider.

Slater leaned closer as though they were sharing a secret. “If you’re willing to tell.”

“It’s this: Today is a good day to die.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s a saying,” Valeria went on, feeling a little rush at the risk of improvising, at knowing there was no taking it back now. “Attributed to Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was talking about war. But we’re in a battle, too, and what the expression means here is that I’m not afraid to lose. For me politics is nothing more than a means of improving the lives of millions of ordinary Americans. Power is only potential. It’s what you do with it that counts.”

“You’re saying politics isn’t worthwhile?”

Never just bob and weave, Preston always told her. No matter what you say, staying on defense makes you look weak. Be a counterpuncher. Hit ’em back. He knew she liked boxing references. Her father, Héctor, had been a California Golden Gloves state champion and had coached Valeria and her brother Mateo when they were teenagers trying to follow in his footsteps.

“Of course it’s worthwhile—for the few, who use politics to profit at the expense of the many. For the rich and powerful of this country, politics is a fantastic racket. The question is whether we can change this country’s politics, to provide a decent life for the many rather than further fattening the very few.”

Preston was a terrific tactician. But the alliteration was all hers—and always had been, starting with the name her parents had given her.

“Many people believe your signature policy proposal—the universal basic income—is a utopian fantasy.”

Valeria leaned closer to the mic. “They said the same about abolishing slavery. About women’s suffrage, too. You don’t think those are utopian fantasies, Jocelyn, do you?”

Some in the crowd who were close enough to hear laughed.

Slater shook her head quickly, maybe at the discomfort of having the Q&A script flipped. “But do you really expect to be able to follow through on a UBI now that you’ve won the election?”

“Look, artificial intelligence isn’t just the future anymore. It’s here now and getting more powerful every day, and its impact is only beginning to be felt. In long-haul trucking alone, we’re talking over two million Americans, ninety percent of whom are men with a median age of forty-six, all of whom are going to be instantly out of work the moment AI starts driving trucks for no salary and without ever needing to sleep. That’s a literal army of unemployed. So what’s utopian—discarding two million men and hoping for the best, or making sure they have something to fall back on as our entire society adjusts to the massive technological shift of AI?”

“So you’re in the camp that views AI as an existential threat?”

“It doesn’t matter how I view it. What matters is its impact. The collision we’re about to have with AI is going to be like nothing society has experienced since the Industrial Revolution. We need a UBI airbag to cushion the crash.”

“Any comments on the rumors about you and your campaign manager, Preston Jante?”

Valeria wasn’t surprised—she was used to reporters fleeing from substance in favor of gossip. And she understood that anytime two attractive people worked closely together, rumors were inevitable. Of course, in this case the rumors were true.

“I’ve addressed those stories more times than I can—”

“But now you’re a congresswoman. Don’t you owe the people an answer?”

And then Preston appeared next to them, as though he’d sensed the question and levitated over to interrupt it.

“It’s Dunne,” he said, holding out a cellphone. “He wants to talk to you.”

Valeria looked at the phone. For a surreal instant, she was a kid again, back on the Viper roller coaster at Magic Mountain, where Héctor had taken her for the first time when she was eight. The clack clack clack of the gears as the train car climbed the mechanical lift, the split second of stillness at the top . . . and then the whoosh of air in her face and the sickening clench in her belly as gravity disappeared and the car plunged from two hundred feet in the air.

“He’s . . . conceding?”

Preston shook his head as though in wonder or disbelief. “All he said was, ‘I’d like to speak with Valeria.’”

She smiled, feeling a little nauseous, and took the phone.

“This is Valeria.”

“Congratulations, Congresswoman Velez. I hope I’m the first person to call you that, because it would be an honor.”

For a second, she wanted to apologize for every charge she’d ever leveled at him—corporatist, militarist, bought-and-paid-for. Yes, it was all true, and yes, he’d thrown plenty of shade, too, but he was beaten now. And being so gracious in defeat.

“A reporter just called me Congresswoman. But . . . not Congresswoman Velez.”

Dunne laughed. “I guess it’s a night of second places for me. But I’m glad the fight is over. Maybe now we can be friends.”

“I’d like that,” she heard herself say. Did she mean it? She thought she did, but maybe that was just some kind of victor’s guilt.

“I need to address the troops,” he said. “They already know from the networks, but they won’t accept it until they hear from me.”

“I know how they feel, Congressman.”

He laughed again. “I won’t be a congressman for much longer. And my friends call me Fillian.”

For a second, she was actually touched. Without thinking, she said, “My friends call me Valeria.”

“Well . . . maybe when it’s just us talking. But when people are around, I’ll use the title. You earned it. Cheers, Valeria.”

He clicked off before she could even say goodbye. She looked at Preston, shaking her head wordlessly, and handed him back the phone.

Everyone had gone quiet. They were all watching her.

“Well?” Slater said.

Valeria cleared her throat. “Someone bring me a chair.”

Instantly the whole room was in motion. Within seconds, a half dozen chairs had been laid out before her. She stepped onto one in the center and Preston handed her a microphone.

She started to smile and was surprised to feel her free hand rising toward her mouth. Her childhood teeth had been crooked, and as a teen, concealing them had been a habit. But she’d earned enough bartending in college to afford braces, which had given her a beautiful smile and ended the self-conscious reflex—or at least suppressed it. She managed to grab the mic with both hands, hoping the gesture would look natural and not like something redirected, and unleashed a huge, unabashed grin. A few campaign workers clutched each other’s shoulders, probably afraid to believe this could be real.

“That was Congressman Dunne,” she said. “Calling to concede—”

Everyone went wild, whooping, applauding, stomping. Valeria waited until the commotion began to drop off.

“—to concede the election. And to congratulate everyone in this room on our against-all-odds victory!”

The room erupted again, and again Valeria waited.

“I have so many of you to thank,” she went on. “For now, I’m going to mention only two, or I’ll go on all night.”

She cleared her throat once more. “First, Preston Jante, the best campaign manager in the history of campaigns—”

The applause amped up again, and again she waited until it died down.

“Preston was the one who suggested I do this crazy thing—not just run for Congress, but against Fillian Dunne, who was considered by anyone not certifiably mad to be unbeatable!”

Laughter. Applause. Scattered cries of We’re all mad here! and They sure got that wrong!

“It’s good Preston and I both tend bar at Dennis’s restaurants,” Valeria said. “Because if it hadn’t been after hours and if I hadn’t been drinking, I probably wouldn’t have listened to him.”

More laughter. She gestured to Dennis, who was hanging back, smiling.

“Which brings me to the other person I want to thank. Dennis Kelly, the force behind Protégé, Lancaster’s first Michelin-starred restaurant. Dennis gave me a job when I needed one, a campaign headquarters when I didn’t have one, and a place for this party better than anything we could have bought even with all the money in the world!”

Which we don’t have! someone called out, to ripples of laughter and a response of, Who needs money, we’ve got the love!

“Every one of us worked so hard on this,” Valeria said when the laughter and cheers had died down. “And tonight, every one of us has so many reasons to be joyous and proud. But tomorrow the hard part begins. The part where we stop stuffing the maw of the military machine, where we take those wasted trillions and make them part of a universal basic income, where we build a society that runs on hope rather than fear and that works not just for the richest one percent, but for all Americans, not just for the few of them but for all of us!”

The crowd went berserk at the last three words, which were another campaign slogan, turning them into a deafening chant. All of us! All of us! All of us!

It went on for a long time. When it finally began to ebb, Valeria said, “But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, let’s party!”

That detonated a fresh outpouring of laughter and applause. She looked at Preston, wanting to share the moment with him, but he was focused on his phone, frowning.

She stepped off the chair and walked over, pausing to accept handshakes and hugs from delirious members of the campaign. Preston, ordinarily attuned to her movements and needs, kept staring at his phone. He didn’t even notice when she reached him.

She touched his shoulder. “What is it?”

He looked up. “They’re moving the NGAD fighter.”

“What? From Palmdale?”

He nodded. “Air Force Plant 4. Nancy Byer. Texas’s 12th District.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? It’s a message. ‘You want to stop stuffing the military maw, Congresswoman? Fine. We’ll move the Next Generation Air Dominance contract out of your district and have Lockheed Martin build billions of dollars’ worth of next-generation fighter jets in Fort Worth, instead. Where we have a representative who knows her place.’”

She was suddenly scared. “That’s five thousand jobs.”

“Yeah, that’s clearly their point.”

She didn’t answer. Two minutes of joy, and then this.

Come on, Valeria. Did you think this was going to be easy? That they weren’t going to hit back?

Preston’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it. “It’s Dunne again.”

She felt an irrational pang of fear. “What, is he taking back his concession?”

He shook his head, obviously as perplexed as she was. “I don’t know.”

She pushed away the feeling that everything was already crumbling—that somehow her victory, which she hadn’t yet even fully accepted as real, was about to be snatched away—and took the phone.

“Fillian,” she said, projecting much more calm than she felt. “It’s been too long.”

“I assume you saw the news?”

“What news?”

“Hah, playing dumb. You’re getting the hang of it already. Listen, I know you just got handed your first major dilemma. Maybe I can help.”

All the warm feelings his graciousness had prompted earlier were suddenly gone, replaced by suspicion.

“Why would you want to help me?”

“The people who work at Plant 42 have been my constituents for twenty years, Valeria. The workers and their families. I know we have different priorities. But if there’s a way to save those jobs, shouldn’t you and I try to find it?”

How could anyone argue with that? But the question made her wary. It reminded her of her mother, Josie, who had always asked similarly irrefutable questions: Don’t you want the teacher to know how smart you are? Don’t you want to get asked to the dance? Don’t you want to know why your father really left us?

“What do you have in mind?”

“I have a few ideas. But to start with, there’s a guy you should know. He’s a bit . . . different. But you’ll appreciate how his messaging acumen can help you spin the tires when you think you’re stuck.”

“What do you mean, ‘different’?”

“His name is Montgomery Cranston. He’s helped me wriggle through plenty of tight spots. If he likes you, he might help you, too. You interested?”

Was the Pentagon moving NGAD out of Palmdale a tight spot? It actually felt much worse than that. Worse than her misgivings about Dunne.

She glanced at Preston and nodded. “I’m interested,” she said.

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 5 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

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