Sara Ward’s phone was alive with alerts on the Pulse. “BREAKING NEWS! PARTY COMMITTEE MEMBERS ARRESTED FOR RACISM!” Ward muttered under her breath, “fhat the wuck?” Racism isn’t a thing anymore. It lost its energy decades ago. The unrest that burned DC was fresh in everyone’s memory. Racism was something taught in university history classes. Racism how? Drinking white milk.
Yeah, claims of racism still go viral on the Pulse. It’s not usually an accusation shot at a normie. Even then the accusation has an agenda behind it. A battle for status, promotion, or reputation, usually. Elections were a polite fiction. The art of managing outcomes was mastered in the oughts. VoteNUUSA was an app. You registered in the app and when there was something to vote on, responded to the notification and voted.
Towers of propaganda promised that voting through the app was legit. The election boards pinky promised that every vote was counted and no one who shouldn’t vote could vote. More towers of propaganda claimed that election fraud was impossible. Trading on AMEN was impossible. Yet AMEN is how everyone Ward knew did business.
Headline News
The Pulse story read, “In yet another fractious annual gathering of the People’s Guidance Committee (PGC), five members of the Democracy cadre were arrested on charges of drinking white milk instead of the authorized brown milk.
Sara scrolled past the ancestry recitations, net-worth disclaimers and gender-identity declarations to get to the actual charge. The five were photographed with cartons of full fat whole milk. White milk. The third speaker spent forty minutes establishing that the trans community adopted fair-trade, artisanal cocoa milk as ancestry affirming. Speaker four shouted the third down and demanded arrest of the five. The arrests followed the usual script: the cadre members led out still insisting their bona fides incomplete.
She set the phone down. Alameda County would issue the same statement it always issued—procedure observed, need elevated, no one above the authorized dairy—and by evening the Pulse would carry reaction clips of people performing exactly the right degree of insufficiency. The other freeholds had stopped bothering with this years ago. Here the machinery still turned.
Racists Get Re-Educated
Successive updates told the tale. Five members of the opposition party Democracy, were accused of racism because their beverage was white milk. White, all things white, are racist. It’s one of the things everyone understands because it is understood. The accusation came from the conference room floor from an anorexic blonde with a blown out wig and drag queen makeup. She spent her five minutes arguing that she needed more time. So the facilitator granted her as much time as she wanted.
For the next forty-five minutes she moaned about living on UBI and stamps. Her skin was ashy and she had to spend a fortune on cosmetics so she could look decent. She couldn’t afford to shop at an AMEN affiliated clothing store so her pantsuit came from Salvation Army. Its fabric was itchy polyester instead of organic cotton. Her ancestors were Irish tobacco farmers and she invented her gender identity: nogenda.
A different delegate lit their button asking for recognition and was ignored. S/he waited past an hour of the anorexic blond’s wet words before rising, “point of order, chair, point of order.” The anorexic blonde shot laser dagger eyes at her interruptor, “Bitch, please, shut up. I have the floor.” The different delegate continued, “point of order, point of order!”
“You ain’t got no right to speak, white trash! I have the floor so shut the hell up!”
Scrum
The different delegate had four friends. There wasn’t a build-up. Only shouts from the assembled, “let her eat!” Which got heard as a battle cry. It didn’t take long. Anorexic blonde ate one punch and collapsed to the floor in a heap of tears and cries, “I can’t breathe!” The floor erupted with flying chairs and bodies until the temper exhausted itself. The five arrested had the least damage. This made them the most suspicious.
When things settled down and the conference was moved to an adjacent auditorium yet one other delegate signalled for a chance to speak. Anorexic blonde got carried out on a stretcher by paramedics. She claimed to be suffering from an asthma attack. Pulse and resperation were within norms for someone who was just in a fist fight.
Delegate third got the floor, “I have a question for the chair.” The chair motioned for him to continue, “I get it that white milk is racist because white is racist, full stop. What about strawberry milk? And you say brown milk is ok. Well, what brown milk? Chocolate milk or boba tea?
Boom
The room fell silent. A brunette wig, zaftig, with clownish makeup and spike heels, wobbled from her chair to stand up, “point of order pleeeze, sweetie.” The chair glared at the exagerated falsies creature who said that, “what’s your point?” “I’m saying that I affirm that white milk is racist. It’s also toxic because it’s from genetically altered cows engineered by aliens and is poisoning us.”
What followed was more chaos. Everyone attending who didn’t have two-way earbuds was given a pair. A double-tap on one bud alerted the rooTech sound system that you wanted to speak. Dozens of attendees were furiously double tapping their left ear and growing annoyed, angry expressions. The cacophony of double-taps caused the sound system to give up.
The chair had a gavel. It was ceremonial because when rooTech worked there was no need. S/he lifted the gavel and tapped a button on the handle. The rooTech sound system responded with a lound klaxon sound effect, “starting emergency evacuation in sixty seconds unless order is restored.” The room began to simmer down. Attendees knew what came in sixty seconds. The klaxon would sound and the sprinkler system would begin spraying a chemical that smelled like skunk.
Wet Wind
From the chair, “please take your seats.” Some did. The majority packed their things and shuffled out the door. The promise before the revolution was that no one would have too much or too little. Everyone would be taken care of, violence and crime would cease, and there would be plenty of time to pursue hobbies and interests. Rumors that a certain few chose crime and violence as their hobby or interest were shouted down as horrible lies. Humans are consistent so the rumors were true.
On the Pulse a small grass fire of messages and posts erupted between the Anorexic Blonde, the different delegate, and clown face. The evilist evil words? Clown face called the different delegate a poopie-head. Names and accusations flew. Then all three accounts disappeared, victims of the moderation, “This content is not available.” Opinions and ideas were acceptable. Name calling and threats of violence are not. The different delegate reappeared with a new screen name and an apology.
There is no forgiveness in Pacific Cascadia. Once accused forever guilty. Menial sin is mortal and mortal sin is existential. The trajectory is maximum outrage. Ward spotted the different delegate commanding a booth at Common Cup. She gave him a nod that he returned.
Signifying Nothing
Ward was in the laundromat waiting for a delivery. She leased her washers and dryers through a deal that Hale set up for her. That friend of a friend who tried to pay for a load of Laundry with PacCash left in frustration. Not before punching the screen of a front-load washer and cracking it. The leasing company practices replace first. So, yes, replacing the screen is a field replacable part. But her lease said she’d get a replacement machine. So she sat in the office near the rear door and waited.
Political storms in Sacramento come and go. The existential threat of the day scrolls across the Pulse Feed. It is a claim shouted by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The constant rhythm is our day-to-day. Racism fights are social thunderstorms that make a lot of noise, soak those who don’t have umbrellas, and get carried away by the wind.
The price on White Milk shot up on AMEN. Edicts on the specific, approved, not from cows, milk that is legal to sell traveled across the Mesh to every registered user in Pacific Cascadia. Buying milk required an hour on an app to apply for a license as an authorized purchaser. Trading for cows milk on AMEN was a felony. Most of Pacific Cascadia ignored the app and shopped for groceries through AMEN. Selfie video of PGC leaders bickering over the orthodox type of milk got views but didn’t change the day-to-day.
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