Brain Drippings: iSamurai (Patreon)

It's 2050 and America is dead.  Long live America.  These days there are the elite rich, the many, many poor, and the few that inhabit the layers between.  The majority of people are either unemployed or marginally employed, with American workers finally cheaper than the better off asiatic workers.  Many are not paid with money at all, but with script that can only be exchanged in the company story.  Luxuries are things like the few expensive, effective anti-biotics and cheap streamed movies and games to keep the masses placated while they wonder where they're going to working next week.

In Pacifica, the country formed from California, Oregon, Washington, Baja, Nevada, Idaho, BC, and Alaska, things are pretty good.  Relatively speaking.  Workers housed in huge block structures in the east travel by high speed rail to the coast in tightly packed cattlecars to work in streamlined agricultural factories.  What isn't chopped out in taxes is taken in a thousand little fees and expenses.  The wealthy flee to party palace Vegas to imagine the strip as the world... and the strip is so much nicer with the panhandlers shot.  The wealthy enclaves in San Francisco, San Jose, and San Seattle are home to the 'respectable rich' who wax on about how superior Pacifica treats its people.  Of course most of those people are kept drugged to make sure their happy.

Of course then you enter the Mountain Territory.  Technically a part of the United States on the map, but with the exception of Deseret, there's not much out there.  The public lands were sold, and bought up by four billionaires, who have been strip mining the region ever since.  Colorado tries to set itself up as a San Denver, but it doesn't really stick.  No one goes there if they can help it.  Nothing but fracking sites and torn up holes in the ground.  The national parks were 'repossessed' and then sold, so there's a massive geothermal power facility in Yellowstone that most are sure is going to blow up the world when they drill too deep.

Still, it's better than the Plains region.  The Ogliwaga aquafer's done, and a thirty year long drought's turned everything from the dakota's to texas into a desert.  From the mountains to the Mississippi, this is a world abandoned.  The cities lie in dusty desolation, with people wondering when they're going to die.  Of course, Texas broke away, stealing pieces of Oklahoma.  Free at last... and wondering why no one gives them respect.  Oh, they got a military.  One of the biggest left after four wars.  Guns are everywhere, and the drug cartels war against the military as the cartels try to subvert the Lone Star country.  But hey.  They finally seceeded.

Still, it's better than Chicago.  Just Chicago, fuck your 'San' very much.  The last bastion of suvival in the north, if anyone can give a fuck.  Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, and Toronto form the 'Great Lakes Economic Zone'.  It's what's left of manufacturing, and since the unions were crushed, it's work in a factory or watch your job disappear.  Don't want to work?  Starve, you lazy fucker.  Only lazy people starve and its their own damn fault if they don't want to work.  Fun?  Fuck your fun.  I work 16 hours.  What the fuck is fun?

Still, it's better than Atlantica.  From the flooded ruins of New York, what's left of the north east is a hunkered down mess.  You have a job?  You better be thankful.  Damned thankful.  Atlantica is full of lost glories.  Yeah, you could go to Philidelphia or Massechusettes, but why would you want to be reminded of better days?  Just keep your head down.  Take care of your own.  And for the love of God, don't get fired because there'd fifty people wanting your job and they will kill to have it.  'Last man standing' job interviews are pretty damned common.  Still, Atlantica at least pretends to care.  They'll tax the bajesus out of you, but it's just to provide the most basic subsistence.  

Still, it's better than the Appalachia Desolation Zone.  A band so torn up and poisoned that it's considered uninhabitable by most of the world.  Oh, there's still coal here.  Great big seams of it, but no body wants it.  Yellowstone finished off whatever was left of the coal industry.  The ruins of small towns litter the area, and what economy exists consists of small enclaves, isolated from the outside world, where people wait for the rapture to end their misery.

Still, it's better than Washington.  Oh, sure, it claims to be the capitol of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  Might as well claim to be capitol of the moon too.  What remains of the country is the pentagon.  Even the treasury is run through the defense department... which is good because the only thing Washington is good for is blowing things up.  It's beneficence is contingent on the money paid to it.  To the highest bidder goes their guns.  Even nukes can be rented, so long as you use them on a non-nuclear target.  Even then...  the isolationist government is largely bought and sold, unable to enforce the most basic laws and indifferent to the people.  Democracy is a joke.  Individuals in congress simply claim 'alternative facts', so why vote?  It's not like they can do anything.

Still, it's better than the feudal zone of the South.  Anything is better than the South, where the thirteenth amendment no longer strictly applies.  After all, if you pay a worker in food, force them to work 7 days a week, and refuse to let them leave under penalty of death, are they really a slave?  Of course not.  In the South, states are little more than patchwork city states with private militas, private workers, and ruling families.  Everyone knows their place, with the boots of the rich on the necks of the poor.  Arkansas has been renamed 'Watson'.

Still, it's better than the rest of the world.  Europe tore itself apart.  Germany finally put down the boot, and kept stomping till nothing was left.  Then the war with Russia... that was ugly.  Then the long freeze of the north.  The mediterraians' gutted out cities and hollowed out nations wondering where the good times went.  After Iran was nuked, Israel was nuked by Saudi Arabia... it's amazing what you can buy off the internet when you really want it.  China and India nuked each other over water.  Russia swept in, cackling like a villain till it over extended itself and was drug down by a billion desperate, hungry, irradiated people.  It nuked both to keep them out, then hunkered down, staring at the world with wide, paranoid eyes while giggling to itself.  Australia and Japan were buried in refugees as the desperate simply gave up asking for admittance.  The less said about south America and Africa, the better.  You just don't go there anymore.

Into this world is Sam.  She's a 'facilitation specialist', augmented with cutting edge enhancements to make her capable of dismembering anyone her corporate overlords tell her to.  Her debt is past eight digits, and isn't going anytime soon.  If she quits, most of her augmentations would be lost, and no one pays for a dull blade.  She might live 'comfortably' but she's a dog on a tight leash, a sword in a jeweled scabbard.  If she's told to kill, she better kill, and if she's having problems with guilt, they've got drugs for that.  Still, it could be worse, right?  It could always be worse.  Then a fellow Specialist, her mentor, her lover, kills an up and coming VP in the company and flees.   It's up to Sam to track her down and decide... is she a person, or just a tool for the whims of the powerful.

Anyway, just an idea I had.  Hopefully a new chapter of Homelands next week.