Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You probably know me from my podcast
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards in my two thousand nineteen series It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, which was a rather unsparing look at
Speaker 1: the possibility of a second American Civil War. Well, that's
Speaker 1: actually an idea I've been playing around with for a
Speaker 1: long time, ever since I was a young man traveling
Speaker 1: throughout the American Southwest and watching the opening fractures of
Speaker 1: the culture war that currently crypts our country. Starting in
Speaker 1: the mid auts, I began traveling to actual war zones
Speaker 1: and Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria. That further informed my thinking
Speaker 1: on the matter, and I started working on a novel
Speaker 1: called After the Revolution, which you're about to have a
Speaker 1: chance to listen too soon. After the Revolution is set
Speaker 1: in a future United States shattered by Civil War. Most
Speaker 1: of the book takes place in what was once Texas
Speaker 1: and is now an independent republic in the American South.
Speaker 1: It follows three characters, which I'm about to introduce you
Speaker 1: to now. First is Manny, a fixer who lives in
Speaker 1: the independent city of Austin. Manny smiled the way the
Speaker 1: British journalist's face blanched as the old Toyota hit the pothole.
Speaker 1: Reggie wasn't used to bad roads, cars driven by actual humans,
Speaker 1: or the way the heavy metal of the gun mountain
Speaker 1: the truck bed made the aluminum frame grown. That was
Speaker 1: all familiar to Manny. He'd grown up in Siodad de Muerta,
Speaker 1: back before the lake would blast, back when people had
Speaker 1: still called it Dallas. The truck's driver veered around the
Speaker 1: bloated corpse of a large dog lying in the middle
Speaker 1: of the road. Reggie gripped the truck bed with white
Speaker 1: knuckles and eyed the swaying AMMO belt of the twenty
Speaker 1: millimeter cannon like it was a coiled snake. The gunner,
Speaker 1: Manny's cousin, Alejandro, grinned down at the journalist. The suspension's
Speaker 1: a little fucked, yeh. The Briton nodded and turned greener
Speaker 1: when the technical hid another pothole. Many supposed he should
Speaker 1: offer a comforting word to the man. That would be
Speaker 1: good business, but a louder part of him looked at
Speaker 1: Reggie's brand new boots and thought he can stand a
Speaker 1: little discomfort. The journalist would brag about this ride for
Speaker 1: months once he got home, Escorting reporters from the safety
Speaker 1: of Austin to the sundry hotspots of the Old Metroplex
Speaker 1: was not Manny's ideal career. Two years ago, he'd been
Speaker 1: working on a bachelor's in business administration from the University
Speaker 1: of Austin. The plan had been to get a job
Speaker 1: with Ages Biosystems, then charm his way into a working
Speaker 1: visa and a gig in the California Republic. But the
Speaker 1: fighting had started up again and ruined all that. The
Speaker 1: culprit this time was the Heavenly Kingdom, a loose assortment
Speaker 1: of Christian extremist militias. They'd boiled out from the suburbs
Speaker 1: of the Old Metroplex and all but broken the Republic
Speaker 1: of Texas. The Autonomous City of Austin had stabilized the
Speaker 1: situation with the help of an alliance of leftist Texan
Speaker 1: militias the Secular Defense Forces. Beating them back had cost
Speaker 1: a lot in blood and time and forced Manny to
Speaker 1: change every plan he'd ever had for his life. So
Speaker 1: he'd embraced the situation and started his own business, hiring
Speaker 1: on some friends as employees. Together they'd built the best
Speaker 1: network of stringers in North Texas. His boys fed him
Speaker 1: video contacts and news updates, and he sold what he
Speaker 1: could to the big foreign media conglomerates. In a couple
Speaker 1: more months, he'd have enough saved up that he could
Speaker 1: fuck off, fly to Europe and apply for a refugee Viza.
Speaker 1: My aunts are pretty good as long as the war
Speaker 1: doesn't end too soon. Second is Sasha, a girl on
Speaker 1: the verge of adulthood in the American Republic, which makes
Speaker 1: up most of the Northeast coast. She is secretly a
Speaker 1: Christian extremist, planning to leave her home and family behind
Speaker 1: to travel to the Heavenly Kingdom. The drone gun rotated
Speaker 1: on its axis and brought a new, slightly different chunk
Speaker 1: of city escape into view. The world was a dull
Speaker 1: gray green color through the lens of the weapon's camera.
Speaker 1: Once again, there were no humans in sight. That was
Speaker 1: the norm, but Sasha still logged in for her scheduled
Speaker 1: gun time every day. Her pay rants would have been
Speaker 1: mortified if they'd known how she was spending her few
Speaker 1: hours of free time, but she had a good VPN,
Speaker 1: or at least it was good enough to hide her
Speaker 1: activity from her non tech savvy elders. She doubted they'd
Speaker 1: ever suspect her of something like this. Sasha was a
Speaker 1: good student. Her grades guaranteed her admission to the American
Speaker 1: University in d C. At one point, she'd had a
Speaker 1: shot at being her high school's valedictorian and maybe of
Speaker 1: gaining admission to Stanford. But then she discovered the true
Speaker 1: Gospel and given herself to Christ. Her grades were still good,
Speaker 1: but probably not good enough to earn her an educational
Speaker 1: visa to the California Republic. The extra time the old
Speaker 1: heir had dedicated to school was now spent glued to
Speaker 1: a gun camp, browsing live feeds from various Christian militias,
Speaker 1: and reading everything she could from the few pastors brave
Speaker 1: enough to preach the word. The new herd didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to school near San Francisco, capital of what
Speaker 1: Pastor Mike had called the world's most sinful nation. Sasha
Speaker 1: didn't even really want to go to college in d C.
Speaker 1: What was the point? Sash her dad called from the kitchen,
Speaker 1: dinners on cheese Enchilada's. There was still nothing in her
Speaker 1: line of sight. For the eleventh month in a row,
Speaker 1: she was spending sixty five AM fed dollars for the
Speaker 1: privilege of staring through a camera at nothing for a
Speaker 1: half hour a day. Sasha had been warned about this
Speaker 1: when she'd signed up to support the Woodlands Martyrs Brigade.
Speaker 1: Their drone guns didn't see much action. The front had
Speaker 1: been stable for the last year. Rumors said the number
Speaker 1: of backers had even gotten to fire during their turn
Speaker 1: was under a dozen. Sasha had hoped she'd be a
Speaker 1: special case. Something moved. Just as she thought about killing
Speaker 1: the app and going downstairs, something moved across her drones
Speaker 1: field of vision. It happened again, and Sasha realized that
Speaker 1: the somethings were armored soldiers sprinting past her weapon. She
Speaker 1: locked the drone on one and for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: selected the fire approval button. A second went by, then another,
Speaker 1: and then a red box replaced her firing redicule. Target
Speaker 1: declined friendly fire. Sasha her mother called up in that
Speaker 1: grating voice that miant. She was almost frustrated enough to
Speaker 1: start yelling get down here. Next is Roland, an aging
Speaker 1: veteran who lives alone in the desert with a body
Speaker 1: full of U. S. Army cyberware and a head full
Speaker 1: of missing memories. He woke up suddenly aware of two
Speaker 1: equally pressing problems. The acids worn off and eight people
Speaker 1: are here to kill me. Both of these facts concerned
Speaker 1: him equally. He couldn't remember his name or where exactly
Speaker 1: he was, which made the impending killed him all the
Speaker 1: more concerning. He opened his eyes, His vision was blurry
Speaker 1: and unfocused. His head felt filled with sand. Rowland, Oh ship,
Speaker 1: that's my name. Roland wondered how long he'd been asleep.
Speaker 1: He reflexively triggered his deck before the dim firing of
Speaker 1: a synapse reminded him that he'd permanently disabled his datic
Speaker 1: connection well a long time ago. Milion two or twenty
Speaker 1: six minutes his hindbrain, what Roland called the acres of
Speaker 1: microscott processors and data banks, spun into his blood. Spat
Speaker 1: the knowledge out, unbidden into his conscious mind. Roland tried
Speaker 1: to curse, but wound up spitting out a wad of
Speaker 1: brackish flim instead. His eyes settled on a quarter full
Speaker 1: bottle of fungus whiskey. He grabbed it, drained it, and
Speaker 1: rooted around on the table where he'd found it until
Speaker 1: his digging turned up a sheet of acid. He ripped
Speaker 1: the sheet in half, ate one half and pasted the
Speaker 1: other on his sweat damp chest. Roland's brain didn't wait
Speaker 1: for the acid to do its job. Nano machines couriered
Speaker 1: the lysurgic diethyl acid directly to his synapses. The drugs
Speaker 1: took cold in a matter of seconds. Acid softened the
Speaker 1: world around him. His hindbrains running commentary faded into a
Speaker 1: sort of generalized hyper awareness of the world around him.
Speaker 1: He sighed, relaxed, and remembered. Woman hovered over him, her
Speaker 1: hands on his shoulders, her knees on either side of
Speaker 1: his body. Sweat dripped down from her short black hair
Speaker 1: onto his face and chest. Her pupils were the size
Speaker 1: of dinner plates. She smelled like acid and desire. She smiled,
Speaker 1: revealing a row of Damascus steel. Heath Roland pulled himself
Speaker 1: out of the memory. He felt the strike team advance.
Speaker 1: His hindbrain generated a map of the approaching assassins. They
Speaker 1: were still a solid minute from his hovel. There were
Speaker 1: six men and two women on the team. If he'd
Speaker 1: wanted a micro seconds focus could have told him which
Speaker 1: members of the group were vegetarians, where two of the
Speaker 1: team were on their minstrel cycles and how recently each
Speaker 1: of their firearms had been cleaned and oiled. But Roland
Speaker 1: didn't care about that information. He was trying to remember
Speaker 1: where he'd left his gun. Listen to After the Revolution
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.