Here's the latest installment of my current dark scifi project. This is chapter 36. If you're just tuning in, consider starting with chapters 1 and 2. Be advised that this work considers difficult subjects, including suicide. If you're in crisis, please seek help. Help is available here.
The President had long been regarded as a vegetable, but when he had a stroke and the Vice President became the Commander in Chief, mainstream media went to great lengths to paint his tenure as active and successful. All he'd ever really done was lie to everyone in service to the economic interests that had been pulling his strings since he was a junior congressman. Yet the media described him as a great champion of the people, a nakedly dishonest portrayal that was exactly in line with how he'd run the country.
From his hotel room in Brandon Falls, Idaho, Tom watched the new President's first address. To Tom's horror, she kept using the term information terrorists to describe anyone who had views which differed from her own. The moment felt extraordinarily surreal, particularly as he had come to this remote town to interview Ronnie Knox, the leader of a separatist movement that had gained an immense following in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
The empire Knox had built in just a short time included thousands of well-armed members spread across hundreds of square miles of ranch land throughout the Western United States, bound together by their love for hell-and-brimstone Christianity and their hatred of the federal government. Although Tom tried to maintain a certain level of journalistic neutrality, he couldn't help but see Knox and his Sovereign Land Company as an emerging American Taliban.
When the time for the interview came, Tom was picked up in a big SUV, where he was blindfolded in the backseat, between two med dressed like commandos. They drove along bumpy roads for forty minutes, removing the blindfold just as the vehicle parked in the yard of a big farmhouse.
Ronnie Knox sat on a vast porch, at a round green table, drinking sun tea. He was an enormous man in his early sixties, wearing a collared shirt under overalls. As Tom approached, Knox stood, greeting him with a tight smile and a firm handshake. They sat and Tom tried the tea. "Thanks, it's good," he said.
"Should we get right to it?" asked Knox. "The recording devices are all in place."
"Great," said Tom. "I'm Tom Wilkins and this is Ronnie Knox. Mr Knox, what can you tell me about the movement you're building?"
"To start with, I'm not building anything," said Knox. "The movement is building itself. I just help keep things organized. Run the company."
"That's the Sovereign Land Corporation?" asked Tom.
"Plus several special purpose companies, yes," said Knox. "Landowners sell to SLC on paper while retaining all of their rights. The company pays attorneys to negotiate the costs of government interference, including taxes. We also provide support for resource sharing and security."
"So there's no truth to the rumor that the whole thing is a giant tax dodge?" asked Tom.
"It's more a protest than a dodge," said Knox. "The end game is zero taxes, just so we're clear. Zero taxes. Zero government interference."
"What about all of your members who rely on public lands and water sources?" asked Tom.
"Why don't you ask me what you really came here to ask me?" asked Knox.
"I don't follow," said Tom.
"Ask me what a Black man is doing in charge of a bunch of racist white people," said Knox.
"Okay," said Tom. "News coverage portrays SLC as a White Power hate group, though I've never seen mainstream coverage mention your race. What's going on with that?"
"When SLC formed, its initial membership was almost all white," said Knox. "They were acutely aware that they might come to be perceived as racists. At those talks, I was usually the only Black person. When I suggested that the company adopt explicitly anti-racist policies, there was a big fight over it and the faction that won put me in charge. Don't get me wrong. There are still racists in our ranks, but we now enforce standards of civility so they keep their hate quiet."
"Interesting," said Tom. "Would it be possible for me to get a copy of those policies? I could publish them along with this interview, after you get me the footage."
"I can do that," said Knox.
"Good," said Tom. "Now, given the history of conflict between ranchers and the authorities, some would say it's only a matter of time before one of your people runs afoul of the law and there's a standoff or a shootout. What would your role be in a situation like that?"
"To be honest, we're still gaming that one out," said Knox. "Our objective would be to protect our people, which could mean a lot of things, but we're also bound by the law, like it or not, so there would be a balancing act involved."
"So you're not planning a rebellion?" asked Tom. "Then why did it feel like visiting the Bin Laden of Brandon Falls when I came here?"
"I oversee a multi-billion dollar operation," said Knox. "Security culture is a part of that."
"Hmm," said Tom. "Let's switch gears. What role would you say 321 played in what you're doing?"
"That's a good question," said Knox. "The suicide epidemic has been hitting rural men hard for a long time. Our belief is that individuals who embrace their own natural sovereignty are less likely to take their own lives, especially when they maintain strong ties with their community. After 321, the SLC began focusing more on being that community for its members. So I guess you could say that the event clarified our mission, and maybe motivated more people to join us."
After the interview, Tom ate dinner with Knox's family. They ate pork chops and thick slices of homemade bread supporting great slabs of butter, all farm fresh. It was well past dark when Tom was returned to his hotel room. While the information was still fresh, he spent an hour making notes for the article he planned to publish alongside the video recording.
Stretching out on the musty bed, Tom closed his eyes and thought about Jo for half an hour. He missed everything about her. Her smell. Her smile. The look in her eyes when she got a little mad but set the feeling aside to dig deeper into whatever was going on. Tom wanted to call, but Jo was busy teaching an intensive workshop for GSG inspectors, and was almost certainly asleep by now. So he just laid there and pined.
"Shit," said Tom aloud, considering that he wouldn't be seeing Jo for weeks. Tomorrow, he was headed to Seattle to research a story on urban autonomous zones. Then it was off to Los Angeles to accept an award for his early reporting on Hunter Domino. After that, he was going to New Mexico to investigate an off-grid community called The Mesa and its rumored connection to human trafficking. These were all important things and Tom was glad to be doing them. But he would've rather just stayed with Jo in DC, basking in their love instead of dealing so directly with the pesky real world.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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