JimHCT

OPENING SCENE: Introduces one of the protagonists and the setting and circumstances under which he lives.

May 3, 2046

Fifty thousand feet above the basement apartment of Jeffrey Maslow in the Westwood section of Denver, a Delta Boeing 939 propelled at a speed of Mach 1.13 toward its San Francisco destination.

Thirty-eight thousand feet lower, storm clouds began to gather and build strength. They would deliver their payload of hail onto Aurora, 10.98 miles northeast of Jeff, in seventeen minutes, twenty-five seconds, eventually resulting in property damage amounting to $4.76 million US.

On the floor above Jeff, Cheryl Daniels, aged forty-eight years four months, was completing her session with the latest release of the SKYN line of personal AI massage devices, which learned the most pleasurable ways to bring the user to a full and sustained release, measuring the input from her Apple Watch, home sensors, and Twitter feed. Based on her current heart rate, the humidity, and two recent likes, it estimated Cheryl’s climax would occur in thirteen minutes thirty-seven seconds.

In Jeff’s studio, a framed picture of Jesus Christ hung on the opposite wall, four feet two inches above his sleeping head.

And at 6:59 am, Jeff rolled in his mattress, knocking an empty bottle of Coors Premium IPA to the floor, fortunately only two inches below. It rolled to the corner of the room, stopping at the base of his half-packed suitcase. Startled by the sound, he immediately looked at his watch and popped-up naked, his thirty-nine-year-old chiseled frame facing Jesus. He thought he heard something drop onto the floor above him as he tripped to the kitchen table. He ran the Colorado WorkingPlace app on his tablet PC tablet and placed his finger on the scanner, confirming his presence via the implanted microscopic chip that held his unique cryptographically-secured identity. Within five seconds, the system took his personal history, education, work experience, skills, salary requirements, and personality profile and matched them against the thousands of contract jobs available. If it required in-person presence, the system also noted Jeff’s location and ensured he was within a sixty-minute commute.

Despite his Johns Hopkins undergrad with honors, the bidding closed, and the system indicated no opportunities. Jeff assumed it was because it noted his sign-in of 07:03:12, an obvious red flag indicating someone who did not take his job search seriously, as job auctions throughout the state started promptly at 7 am.

And then a window popped up.

MIGHT WE SUGGEST THESE GREAT JOBS YOU APPEAR QUALIFIED FOR:

Slaughter Technician, Globeville

Pew polish and wax technician, Colorado Springs

He rejected the proposed jobs and received a text from the Colorado unemployment office twenty seconds later noting his failure to obtain work and the subsequent application of unemployment benefits to start at 8 am. The text also provided his current remaining annual balance: twenty-five hours, thirty-four minutes, and forty-five seconds, counting down for good measure.

It was May, he knew. Something like the third. Or fifth. That wasn’t a lot left. He brought up his bank account balance, which appeared as a hologram emanating from his watch, and performed a back-of-the-napkin estimate that told him he had about two more weeks before he would be out of funds. It was either send out an SOS home for cash or just give up and move there.

It wasn’t that his dad wouldn’t give him the money: he always made it clear to his son that finances should never be an issue, encouraging his attempt to work in education despite the significant headwinds. If he required help, he just needed to ask, no questions or judgment. But after his father got him his first, and last, full-time job, it was a decision of final resort. He was going to make it on his own and overcome the career-limiting decision to get a degree in English, influenced by watching his father work brutal hours for years in financial services: the bank seized just about all his father’s days. It was seemingly impossible to land an education position that most school districts had outsourced to lower-cost teachers from countries like Ireland and Scotland, which enabled a cost-effective model at market rates and terms, without unions getting in the way. The state-mandated core curriculum of American Math, American Science, American History, American Christianity, and gym received full-time, in-person American teachers. The non-core classes of language and the arts went to the visa holders. After all, did a teacher need to be an American to talk about Shakespeare’s sonnets? Or other things that didn’t matter in the real world?

Story Statement

In 2046 America, Lily Proctor and Jeff Maslow must expose the corruption in the government of their town of Vicksburg Gulch, Colorado, and ultimately throughout the country, by stopping Iwanna Dennison and her family from completing the subjugation of American democracy.

Antagonist sketch

Iwanna Dennison, daughter of the six-term President of the United States and CEO of Dennison Enterprises, is running for Governor of Colorado. Despite constant misogynistic treatment by her family, she has led their corporate enterprises successfully, culminating in their development of humanistic robots with advanced AI. She purchases the support of the Reverend Brady Taggert, her political rival and head of the largest Church in the United States. This effectively makes her the Governor-elect, as there are no viable candidates from other parties, resulting from the extensive corruption of the last twenty years under President John Dennison. When her father's health worsens, she takes the opportunity to bypass her brothers and, in partnership with the world's wealthiest person, become President to implement a plan to force non-whites and her political rivals to accept her uncontested leadership, or force them out of the country.

Titles

The current working title is THE BOOK OF DENNISON. It refers to the antagonist and her father by name, the religious overtones of the novel, and, ultimately, the conclusion of their plotline.

The original title was THE WORLD ON HER SHOULDERS, a reference to the antagonist and Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED. The novel takes place outside of Colorado Springs, and a major theme is the abuse of power by people who align themselves directly with the Rand philosophy of Objectivism.

Comparables

Many dystopian novels recently published fall more into the science fiction/fantasy genre, which I have very intentionally tried to avoid because I want the reader to see today in the near future. While I do have some "gadgets," some cool, some pure evil, they are all easily envisioned by today's reader, so though the novel is set in 2046, there is little "fantastic" to be found.

"The One" by John Marrs comes quite close to this approach as it leverages technology already in use today, DNA testing, for what might seem a positive application: finding one's true love. It's now on my wish list, but I won't be able to read it until after the conference. I can tell I'm going to like his approach very much and I'm sure I'll learn from it. It also seems to be well received.

"The Greater Good: A dystopian novel of Divided America" by Seth Daniel Parker, is very close to my theme and is set in a time after the United States has been divided geographically. While my novel does not take that approach, it is clearly inspired by the author's similar observations of how bad things can get in this country should they continue to deteriorate. I learned from my Amazon search in this exercise that there is very little fiction on my primary theme, which is what the US could realistically see if the far-right in this country succeeds with plans already in flight. Most hits are fantasy or post-apocalyptic, which is not my objective. I want people to envision reality, not fantasy.

Hook

In 2046 Colorado, a woman must flee to Mexico to obtain an abortion that threatens her life. When she is later arrested for murder, she must challenge the far-right regime that has captured American government at all levels, and decide whether to allow her powerful but corrupt father to assist in her fight.

Inner Conflict

Lily Proctor is fully aware of the world in which she lives, society and government overwhelmed by the successes of the far-right to corrupt and undermine all aspects of culture and infuse them with extreme religious morality. Like many in her generation, she is resigned to this reality and unsure how to do anything about it, but when her 6-week pregnancy is picked up by an airport embryonic-detection system, the reality of this world comes front and center for her, abortion illegal at the federal level, no exceptions permitted. When she learns the pregnancy is ectopic and threatens her life, she must break the nation's laws. When her boyfriend Jeff Maslow, a teacher in the reclusive new town of Vicksburg Gulch, developed by Iwanna Dennison, is arrested for illegally quoting the banned movie "Dead Poets Society" to his students, Lily must enter the fray against the powers, local and national, to extract both of them from the legal jeopardy in which they find themselves, in the process discovering the much greater evil plan already underway. Unknown to Jeff, Lily's real name is Malodor, daughter of the world's wealthiest man. Though she has committed to cutting off ties with her father, she realizes she must break that vow to keep her and Jeff from a lifetime of prison: only her father Noel can get them out of their situation.

Secondary Conflict

Institutions throughout the country have been taken over by the far-right, setting up the inevitable conflicts of morality and law that impact the lives of all citizens, but particularly those out-of-power who believe in the liberal democracy the United States championed throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. When it becomes clear to Lily and her new romantic interest, Jeff Maslow, that there is something unusual about the Dennison-financed company-town Vicksburg Gulch, they agree to investigate, Jeff taking a long-sought job as a teacher there. What they witness, and ultimately come into conflict with, is a microcosm of the fantasy 1950's-like world the far-right looks to as their Eden, their perfect society: Jim Crow aside. Despite her family connection, Lily has made the conscious decision to fight alone without any request for assistance, but eventually realizes there is far more to fight than she and Jeff could ever imagine.

Setting

All aspects of American culture in 2046 have been influenced by the far-right, who were empowered in 2024 to implement a system of political dominance through the erosion of the voting process at all levels of government. What ensued since was the implementation of their culture war against progressivism, in theory, founded in Christianity but lacking any evidence of loving thy neighbor. Abortion is banned outright, prosecuted as murder. LGBTQ+ rights are revoked at all levels of government, and the "enforcement organization" known as the Guardian Angels, better known in places like Iran as morality police, are used to enforce these values on the street level, often with the assistance of law enforcement. Educational curricula have been replaced to retell the American story in a way that whitewashes the actions of the past, and any fiction that appears to support individualism with themes like "carpe-diem" are removed from library bookshelves and theaters. The US has invaded Mexico and taken control of the state of Chihuahua, under the pretext of protecting its borders, and rationalizing a subsequent deportation of Mexicans. This results in worldwide sanctions of America by much of the First World, crushing the American economy, and making American workers even more dependent on the government. Iwanna and Noel eventually use this to their perverse profit.

The setting is the most vital aspect of the novel as it is today's America tweaked just enough to make the reader realize how viable some of the evil it portrays really is. As it is also a dark comedy, an early scene demonstrates some of the latest and greatest tech: LYSSA, a Dennison product that detects anger from anyone in its range and alerts the nearest members of the "Good Guys With Guns" volunteer organization to draw on whoever is displaying the anger: their solution to gun laws where the legal age to carry is 12. Later, Lily, who takes a job as a "stewardess" ("woke" sensitivity about appropriate careers for women abolished), looks out the window to witness the latest addition to Mount Rushmore: President Dennison, to the right of Lincoln, his profile looking over his shoulder, to the east. And, as all federal complexes are now used to enforce federal law, the "heartbeat" detectors that can identify the presence of an embryo. When a TSA agent discovers Lily's pregnancy, he promptly registers the embryo and assigns it a social security number. It is now a citizen with full constitutional rights.