“Twenty Million Down,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

The first thing Reagan Newcastle did after he became Peace Commissioner for the State of Texas was call a meeting of his board of directors. He sat at the head of the table for the first time.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “First, let me congratulate you. Without the influence of each of you, we would not be in this position today.”

“It’s glory to Jesus,” said Matthew. “We all agree on that.”

Well-coiffed heads wagged.

“The question,” Luke said, “is what we’re going to do with our new power. Things are boiling in every direction.”

“Surrounded by the pools of Hell!” shouted Matthew, raising his hands. None of the others joined him.

“Let’s prioritize,” said Peter, who, as Chairman of the Board, usually sat where Newcastle sat now.

“Water,” said James. “Everybody ignores water. Takes it for granted, like the grace of God. But we’re in the fourth year of another drought. Last good rain we got was just before the end of the Second Outage.”

“I remember that one,” said John. “Got three feet of hail in the church parking lot.”

“Point is,” said James, “we’re about to run out. We’ve got thirty-five-million people in the State of Texas, and we can keep maybe ten, fifteen million watered and fed. That’s it.”

“So you’re suggesting a population reduction,” said Peter.

“It would be a blessing in disguise.” James sat and blinked.

“How many registered members we got among us?” asked Peter.

“You mean Texas only?” asked James.

Peter nodded. They discussed it. Threw out numbers. Added them. Peter stood and wrote figures on a white board. It added up to twenty-two million members of the twelve leading churches in the state, the head of each church making up the board of directors of 2G Inc., the parent corporation.

“How many of these tithe or better?” Peter asked.

They argued a while, then finally agreed: about a quarter. Peter worked a calculator, then said, “Let’s be generous and round it up to six.” On the white board, he wrote six million.

“Now,” he said. “How many are your top supporters? Donate a million or more a year?”

“Reagan should have that,” said Mark.

Newcastle nodded and consulted his backhand computer. “Across our entire territory, it’s higher than you’d think. About eight hundred. Let’s see. Looks live five hundred or so in Texas.”

“We can’t kill the cash cows,” said Simon Peter. “Those eight hundred pull that money from a whole lot of people. We can’t cut those out from under them.”

James sighed and sat back. “Lack of water will kill the cash cow unless we better manage the herd.”

“Flock,” corrected Matthew.

James shrugged.

“And weather’s a problem too,” said Luke. “Heat, I mean. How many hundred-plus days did we have last year?”

“A hundred-thirty-seven,” said James. “Here in Fort Worth, anyway. And we haven’t had a freeze in, what, six years?”

“Thank God for that,” said John. “I’ve had the best winter gardens ever.”

“How do you water that?” asked James.

“Toilet water,” said John, locking eyes with James, who frowned.

“Don’t forget solar panels,” said Mark. “Two cargo super-sailers from China went down in storms last year, remember, and they haven’t replaced them. The only two producers left on American soil, if you want to call it that, were destroyed in the Thanksgiving Day earthquake two years ago.”

“Hand of God,” said Matthew. “Sodom and Gomorrah!”

“Earthquake should’ve hit D.C.,” said Luke. “Those guys are useless.”

“Okay, okay,” said Peter. He looked at Newcastle. “It’s your meeting. But it seems to me we know what we must do. Now that we have the power to actually do it.”

Newcastle nodded and leaned forward. “That’s what I want backing for. And I don’t want any majority-rules thing. I want all of us here to share the burden equally.” He scanned the eyes of the men in the room. He could tell they knew what he talked about.

“So how many?” asked Simon Peter.

Newcastle looked at Peter’s numbers on the board. “James says we can carry maybe fifteen. Fifteen from thirty-five is twenty.”

The room went quiet. “Twenty-million people?” asked John quietly.

“If we don’t, God will,” said Matthew.

“That’s seven million registered Christians,” said Simon Peter.

“The false ones,” said Matthew, “hiding among us.”

“Can we figure out who those are? In a week?” asked Matthew.

“It would sure leave a lot more for the rest of us. Anybody been to a grocery store lately?” asked Luke.

“It would set back the rebellion, that’s for sure,” said Mark.

“Let’s vote,” said Newcastle. “All in favor of reducing the population of the State of Texas to a sustainable fifteen million, raise your hands.”

Eight of the twelve raised their hands immediately. Two others rose more slowly.

“Couldn’t we let them be soldiers? Slaves, maybe?” asked John.

“No water,” said James, holding his hand high in the air.

“How many are black or Hispanic?” asked Matthew.

“All of them,” said Peter. “Twenty million is exactly the number of non-whites in this state.”

That seemed to convince the two holdouts. All twelve raised their hands. Peter turned and smiled at Newcastle.

Newcastle leaned back in his chair. “I want to do it in five days, gentlemen. Four million a day. And then we’ll be able to build the New Eden we all want.” But only, he thought, if he managed to find his Eve, his Annie.

 

Author’s note: This is so absurd, I’m not sure I like it. But in flash fiction, I let it play as it falls out of my brain. Something mutated from here will make it into the book.

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.