Suddenly I got butterflies in my stomach. “Uh, FooDog, maybe you’d like to be the one to run the UWA…”
“No way, padre. The Dog’s gotta keep a low profile, remember? The farther away I can get from people, the happier I am. Nope, the honour is all yours.”
“Okay. Thanks—I guess.”
FooDog’s calculations were a little off. It only took thirty-six hours before the Phantom Blots knocked the Libertinearians out as most influential politco-wiki, pushing Ivo Praed from his role as “president” of the UWA, and elevating me to that honour.
Sandybump, a speck of land off the New England coast, was now the White House. (Not the current museum, but last century’s nexus of hyperpower.) I was ruler of the nation—insofar as it consented to be ruled. Cherry was my First Lady. And FooDog was my Cabinet.
Time to get some satisfaction.
8. WIKIWAR
The day after my political ascension, we reconvened the meeting we had conducted at Gerontion, this time at Sandybump. All the same participants were there, with the addition of Cherry.
(Lots of other important national matters were continually arising to demand my attention, in my new role as head jimmywhale, but I just ignored them, stuffing them in a queue, preferring not to mess with stuff that I, for one, did not understand. This abdication of my duties would surely cause our charade to be exposed soon, but hopefully not before we had accomplished our goals.)
FooDog and I restated our grievances to the South Americans, but now formulated as a matter of gravest international diplomacy. (Foolty showed me the avatar he was presenting to the South Americans and our coastal management wikis, and of course it looked nothing like the real Dog.) This time, with the weight of the whole UWA behind our complaints, we received less harsh verbal treatment from the foreigners. And our compatriots caved right away, acknowledging that they had been negligent in not protecting our waterways from shipworm incursion. When FooDog and I announced a broad range of penalties against them, the mermaid shimmered and reverted to a weepy young teenaged boy.
But the South Americans, although polite, still refused to admit any responsibility for the Great Teredo Invasion.
“You realize, of course,” said FooDog, “that you leave us no recourse but to initiate a trade war.”
One of the Latinos, who was presenting as Che Guevara, sneered and said, “Do your worst. We will see who has the greater balance of trade.” He stood up and bowed to Cherry. “Madam, I am sorry these outrageous demands cannot be met. But believe me when I say I am gratified to see you well and suffering no permanent harm from your unfortunate accident.”
Then he vanished, along with the others.
Cherry, still un-SCURFED, had been wearing an antique pair of spex to participate in the conference. Now she doffed them and said, “Rebels are so sexy! Can’t we cut them some slack?”
“No! It’s time to kick some arrogant Venezuelan tail!”
“I got the list of our exports right here, nephew.”
From the ubik, I studied the roster of products that the UAW sold to Venezuela, and picked one.
“Okay, let’s start small. Shut off their housebots.”
After hostilities were all over and I wasn’t head jimmywhale anymore, I had time to read up about old-fashioned trade wars. It seems the tactics used to consist of drying up the actual flow of unshipped goods between nations. But with spimed products, such in-the-future actions were dilatory, crude and unnecessary.
Everything the UWA had ever sold to the Venezuelans became an instant weapon in our hands.
Through the ubik, we sent commands to every UWA-manufactured Venezuelan housebot to shut down. The commands were highest override priority and unstoppable. You couldn’t isolate a spimed object from the ubik to protect it, for it would cease to function.
Across an entire nation, every household lost its domestic cyber-servants.
“Let’s see how they like washing their own stinking windows and emptying their own cat-litter!” I said. “They’ll probably come begging for relief within the hour.”
FooDog had pulled up another roster, this one of products the Venezuelans sold us. “I don’t know, nephew. I think we might take a few hits first. I’m guessing—”
Even as FooDog spoke, we learned that every hospital in the UWA had just seen its t-ray imagers go down.
“Who the hell knew that the Venezuelans had a lock on selling us terahertz scanners?” I said.
FooDog’s face wore a look of chagrin. “Well, actually—”
“Okay, we’ve got to ramp up. Turn off all their wind turbines.”
All across Venezuela, atmospheric powerplants fell still and silent.
The response from the Southerners was not long in coming. Thirty percent of the UWA’s automobiles—the Venezuelan market share—ground to a halt.
FooDog sounded a little nervous when next he spoke. “Several adjacent countries derived electricity from the Venezuelan grid, and now they’re demanding we restore the wind turbines. They threaten to join in the trade war if we don’t comply.”
I felt nervous too. But I was damned if I’d relent yet. “Screw them! It’s time for the big guns. Bring down their planes.”
Made-in-the-UWA airliners around the globe running under the Venezuelan flag managed controlled descents to the nearest airports.
That’s when the Venezuelans decided to shut down the half of our oil-refining capacity that they had built for us. True, oil didn’t play the role it once did in the last century, but that blow still hurt.
Then the Brazilians spimed their autos off, and the nation lost another 40 percent of its personal transport capabilities.
Over the next eight hours, the trade war raged, cascading across several allied countries. (Canada staunchly stood by the UWA, I was happy to report, incensed at the disruption of deliveries from the Athabasca Oil Sands to our defunct refineries. But the only weapon they could turn against the Southerners was a fleet of Zamboni machines at Latin American ice rinks.) Back and forth the sniping went, like two knights hacking each other’s limbs off in some antique Monty Python farce.
With each blow, disruptions spread farther, wider and deeper across all the countries involved.
The ubik was aflame with citizen complaints and challenges, as well as a wave of emergency counter-measures to meet the dismantling of the infrastructure and deactivation of consumer goods and appliances and vehicles. The politco-wikis were convulsing, trying to depose me and the Phantom Blots. But FooDog managed to hold them at bay, as Cherry rummaged through the tiniest line items in our export list, looking for ways to strike back.
By the time the Venezuelans took our squirm futons offline, and we shut down all their sex toys, the trade war had devolved into a dangerous farce.
I was exhausted, physically and mentally. The weight of what Cherry, FooDog and I had done rested on my shoulders like a lead cape. Finally I had to ask myself if what I had engineered was worth it.
I stepped out on the deck to get some fresh air and clear my head. Cherry followed. The sun was sinking with fantastically colourful effects, and gentle waves were lapping at Sandybump’s beach. You’d never know that several large economies were going down the toilet at that very moment.
I hugged Cherry and she hugged me back. “Well, babe, I did my best. But it looks like our revenge is moot.”
“Oh, Russ, that’s okay. I never wanted—”
The assault came in fast and low. Four armoured and be-weaponed guys riding ILVs. Each Individual Lifting Vehicle resembled a skirt-wearing grasshopper. Before either Cherry or I could react, the chuffing ILVs were hovering autonomously at the edge of our deck, and the assailants had jumped off and were approaching us with weapons drawn.