“Drone up,” said Lieutenant Levi.

Heads turned and eyes followed the drone’s swift ascent to the sequoia canopy 350 feet above. It briefly hovered there before slipping out of sight, free of the enclosing redwoods and the damp shadowed ground.

“Eyeballs on the treeline,” ordered Captain Sophie Bencker. She stood next to the prisoner in the midst of the small circle of Rangers in the clearing. Good soldiers, special forces and Marines. But they’d been out here three weeks. Too long, she thought, and searched for Cat. It was a game to see if she could spot its nano-camouflage. There! Some thirty yards away by the northeast treeline, just beyond the unit’s defensive EM bubble. Still and sphinx-like, Cat was peering into the trees, perpetually ready. A hybrid predator of nano/biotech and huge male cougar, its luminescent red eyes gave troopers the shits.

Snowbird-North Fork CS Zone was an immense glory of primeval forest. In the early 2040s the UN had renamed all world forests, temperate and tropical, as Carbon-Scrubber Zones. An attempt to save our planetary lungs from incessant pillaging, it also made for good PR. Yet Snowbird had rare earth mines—and hydrothermals—which added up to very big bucks. Particularly for the Consortia, unholy alliances between defence, mining and tech-media, which sponsored most public ventures.

In the clearing, Janssen, Fernandez and Kelly were fastening their HOTS, Hostile Terrain Suits.

“I’m sick of pissing in my suit. Three weeks out, it stinks,” said Fernandez.

“Yeah, you stink like a bear,” said Kelly, activating her own suit. “But gotta recycle those meds.”

They urinated on the march to recycle their precious mix of bio-protection and performance-enhancing drugs, triple-A approved, and a vital advantage in the Games.

Once Taiwan was off the table, the superpowers had seen the futility of endless confrontation. They could still dominate the show and make gestures to eco-stewardship while keeping a tight rein on their own populace. The business of war had become too risky for those in power and far less rewarding. Also in trouble were the bloated dope-ridden Olympics, tame sports for fractional achievements. Already losing their appeal for fragile societies ridden with eco-guilt, suicide bombers at the 2036 Mumbai Games put the nail in their coffin. Sensing an unprecedented opportunity, the Consortia and their shadowy financiers had created the New Reality Games.

Its players were veterans and loner-chancers of all nationalities; its stars were ex-special forces. For these near-redundant military, the Games meant good money, playing with new if untested tech, and rules of engagement that were… flexible. Survival odds were equally variable, and players needed any edge they could get. The HOTsuit was nano-metamaterial and piezoelectrical-responsive, sealed head-to-toe, and designed by Hugo Boss, to boot.

“Hey Kelly, your tits really that shape or is it just the suit?” asked Fernandez.

“You’re never gonna find out,” Kelly countered with a smile.

“These suits really protect us?” asked Koch, the newbie on his first deep patrol.

“They’ll take a hit from light fire, shield your body heat against infra-red detection, and bend light to give basic camouflage” said Janssen who really got off on this stuff. “Temporary protection against biochems, and limited EM defence”

“Can’t wait to see if that’s true,” muttered Kelly. Looking at Fernandez she added: “If the Enclavers or Smugglers get hold of you, they’ll strip it off. And dump what’s in it.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Fernandez. Kelly just turned away.

The New Reality Games offered a spectacle of lethal conflict at human scale in a choice of environments “protected” by a bankrupt UN. Governments bought in. The Global South ravaged by floodwaters, firestorms, and epidemics saw lands emptied by violence and migration become newly lucrative. In the First World, rulers eschewed the thankless business of governance in favour of full-on entertaining of their consumer-citizens, those purposeless slaves to the social media mainstream as they curated their stories and imbibed podcasts. Gamers&Gamblers Anonymous briefly became the flagship 12-step recovery programme until outlawed.

“Just stay on mission, stay alive, and bank the friggin paycheck,” said Kelly wearily.

Protected forests needed protectors, and Bencker’s Rangers were among the best. They were owned by PC—the Pacific Consortium of Afrikaan Mines, AppleMeta, LevantSolar, Nike, Russian SiberNex, Vatican Zurich Holdings, and X-Disney. The PC yellow-flash-on-blue logo adorned their uniforms, along with its slogan We fight For Trees, which was unwise to dispute.

This particular, early Spring mission of Bencker’s Rangers was a deep sweep into Snowbird to check on the principal mining operations and tolerated human activities, read tree monitors, gather intel on strange reports filtering in from deep country, deal with any bad guys, and generally strut their stuff.

“The HOTS will keep you safe, Fernandez,” Janssen put in helpfully, exchanging a look with Kelly.

The Games were invisible to those on the ground. Airtime was not live—financially and politically way too risky—but edited and sold for online VR/AR products showcased at Moondance, the annual games fest where the world came to shop for some dynamic oblivion.

All of which made the Captiva, their new prisoner, very valuable. They’d stumbled upon her just before dawn. Strange. She was one of the forest dwellers, rarely seen. In Snowbird a deep patrol could come up against armed groups either from the fortified Enclaves of wealthy religious wackos or from Vancouver smugglers using stealthcraft to run in food, Sinopioids, weapons—oh the bosses loved a brush with those guys. There were also survivalist Treeboys looking for redemption or whatever, and these Captivas, who just goddam lived here. Then there were the weird rumours, stuff that bounced around a campfire at night. Keep the lid on that shit thought Bencker.

The Captiva. She was compact and muscular, Asian-looking with black pony tail and a crest of grey like a warning, and eyes that missed and betrayed nothing. She sat on the ground, her hands bound behind her. Lieutenant Levi’s SCAR 7.62 mm had the safety off and its barrel was in her face, and she held his gaze. Captain Bencker entered the small circle of troopers.

“Lower your weapon,” she ordered in even tone.

A spasm played across Levi’s well-shaven jaw; troopers watching the treeline glanced over.

“Sir, the Rules say prisoners are without rights,” countered Levi. “She’s probably been raped, anyway.”  Trooper Fernandez, down on one knee and eyes on a small navscreen, shook his head.

“Not by us,” said Bencker quietly. “The weapon, Lieutenant.”

Bencker never pulled rank and the quietness of her voice spoke of something coiled. Those within earshot tensed. This had been brewing awhile: a shaven-headed female commander with a reputation even outside the Rangers, and a marine hunk with a gilded tech-and-sports education and son of a Consortium bigwheel. And now this prisoner, who likely doesn’t know shit about the Games. Levi wants to waste her, WTF?

Cat had locked its red eyes on Levi. Neurolinked to the commander, Cat received Bencker’s biofeed and instructions and sent back images and recon sense-data. Levi didn’t have to look at Cat, just felt the eyes. Slowly he turned from the prisoner and cradling his weapon, sauntered to the perimeter with a fuck-you roll in the shoulders. The Captiva’s eyes followed him, then went to Bencker who spoke for everybody to hear.

“The Captiva might have intel, and knows how to survive here.” Play with what you’ve got. Her own weapon was slung across her back, her preferred Heckler & Koch MP5 upgrade.

“Hope daddy Levi don’t spot that little scene,” Kossowski said quietly to Janssen, who nodded.

* *

Something had now opened inside the unit. An opening could be as sharp and haphazard as an incoming shell or as drawn-out as nursing a cold beer while stoned under a hot shower after a patrol in bad bush. It was all SAR, Situational Awareness and Readiness, what nerves fed on in the field to make each moment full and keep you alive. Regardless of all the think-positive shit or meticulous PPTs in a pre-op briefing, out here in deep Snowbird the mind was veined with uncertainty. How does this Captiva survive? wondered Bencker, moving away to sit against a small rock.

* *

Janssen finished cleaning his Glock automatic, an uncle’s hand-me-down; he loved the heft of it. He looked over at Cooper sitting on the ground with his plants. “Cooper, what you got for us today?”

A trained botanist and mycologist, Cooper could spot a mushroom at 30 yards. “The usual, some buttons, ink caps, oysters, chanterelles. And a shroom,” holding it up. “Psilocybe semilanceata. This little beauty will open your mind and mess with your brain. If you have one.”

“Fuck you,” said Janssen, and Kelly smiled, then noticed the Captiva looking at them.

“What’s your problem?” asked Kelly. “Hungry? You want some?” as if teasing a child.

“Shut it, Kelly,” said Cooper, squatting in front of the prisoner and holding out the mushroom with a questioning look. He waited; they all waited.

“If she won’t speak, maybe Levi had the right idea,” said Kelly.

“Maybe she’s scared of you,” said Janssen.

“Not this one,” replied Kelly. “But she might hate us. And she doesn’t like us picking her mushrooms.”

“Sacred.”

The word fell from the Captiva and drew eyes to her, and nobody spoke. Again Cooper held out the mushroom: “Sacred, how?” he asked quietly.

Bencker had put down her book and was looking at the group.

“We talk to the dead,” and her eyes travelled over them, “to our ancestors.” Cooper nodded, his brows knitted together, and backed away.

“Now that is intel,” he said, mostly to himself.

Kelly breathed out audibly. “Friggin ancestors done shit for me. I don’t even know my parents.”

“Hey, straight up, Cooper,” said Janssen, whose social skills were what you’d expect from someone on the spectrum. “What you reckon’s out there?”

“No friggin clue,” said Cooper. “And hope it stays that way. Anything could stay hidden in this.”

“C’mon, what aren’t they telling us?” insisted Janssen.

“It’s probably the mines,” answered Cooper slowly. “Rare earths and heavy metals discharged into ponds and streams, then leaking into the aquifers. And the mines are just the stuff we know about.” Silence.

Bush fever. Bencker couldn’t let that get into her unit.

“Trooper Nurri, activate Exemption,” she ordered loudly. Nurri stopped scoping the treeline through his gunsight and touched his suitPad. He was the only one Bencker could bounce ideas off of—the price of being a woman in the ancient profession of arms commanding men, some of them smart… some, well, less than smart. Nurri was self-contained and ruthless, with a devilish sense of humour and piercings in strange places.

“Snowboard CSZ is unoccupied, Captain,” commented Nurri, and Bencker gave him a pointed look.

Exemption protects us but also reveals our position, I know.

“Exemption activated,” quickly confirmed Nurri, knowing better than to give her attitude.

Regardless of popular misconceptions and Consortium hype, big data-assisted AI had only amplified the uncertainty of warfare for those on the ground. Sure, troopers humped hi-tech weaponry and sweated in HOTsuits, but they were up against odds they could never fathom. Game rules forbade calling in fire-support or medical evacuation. You went in and you came out. Or you didn’t. Shareholders and spectators of the Games would always be the winners, so finish the mission and stay alive. Troopers functioned more or less strung out in their private meds-enhanced SAR-cloud; some of these Rangers were also stoned a lot of the time, thanks to Cooper.

“Another morning in paradise,” said Kossowski, sitting on the ground and spooning rations into her mouth. “Friggin mist, it’s always shifting, things appear and disappear, can’t tell what I’m seeing.” She licked the spoon carefully and began packing her gear.

“And drip drip drip all friggin night,” added Koch, bloodying a Tiger mosquito on his arm; dengue was rife here but the meds should handle that.

Fernandez took a last look at the photo of a lady, his, and their child, slid it inside his suit and stood.

* *

Bencker took meds; she also had Cat to bounce off. But her refuge was a tattered copy of the Odyssey. Where it spoke of creatures that lure ships onto rocks she’d noted: “the Sirens speak to each sailor only about himself. Like algorithms.” Damn this Captiva.

Bencker went to the prisoner, knelt and held out the black carbon neck-bracelet. “Put it on.”

The woman stared at it, expressionless, stared at her and down at the large dagger in Bencker’s belt. The Captiva took the bracelet and slowly put it around her neck, clicking it to lock. She now belonged to their SecurNet—in fact, to Cat. She could try and run but… bad idea.

Bencker moved back to the rock and the Odyssey. Her father had also been a reader and his old copy of the Iliad was on her desk back at base, his photo tucked inside. It had ridden in her pack until she’d discovered the Odyssey, the first tale of a lost wanderer

Her father the Colonel had been a decorated warrior of the conflicts that had seen the rise of the consortia. He’d died in an infamous op at MB7, a mining-base in northeast Africa, when everything had gone fatally wrong for the unit… and unexpectedly well for its sponsors.

Twenty years later, situations were even more “fluid,” even for the Games. Slick Powerpoint assumptions broke as soon as a boot touched the drop zone—even because it touched the ground, in this quantum fuck-up of a world. Bencker had become an elite soldier because her loneliness and rage could only be soothed in battle and its liminal moments, where knowing and caring were fused in pure awareness of death, of its imminence. Her personnel file was a mix of medical reports and censorial black ink, and troopers either avoided her in the mess or vied for a place on her team.

Resting on the ground against the rock, Bencker read her Odyssey. Kelly and Janssen, sitting nearby, exchanged looks.

“Any answers in there, Captain?” ventured Janssen carefully.

“No,” said Bencker. No answers; acceptance, maybe. She resumed: “Three thousand years ago wars were short and small-scale, close-to and savage, sometimes honourable,” said Bencker, echoing her father. She turned her head, suddenly aware that the Captiva was looking at her and the book.

“Men fought like animals, some saw themselves as half-gods,” she added.

“No shit,” said Janssen, nodding. “No shit.”

“Uh, and the space thing that the Colonel—” began Jenssen.

“The Space, his notion of leadership, Trooper,” Bencker said with finality, putting away the book.

“And the women?” asked Kelly.

“They washed bodies and mourned, or waited for their men,” replied Bencker. “If on the losing side they were sold, or…” she stopped, remembering the Captiva and Levi and what he’d said. Kelly and Janssen looked at the Captiva then away and began scoping the trees through their gunsights.

“Move out in ten,” said Bencker. “Lifting the Bubble.”

Gloved fingers checked safety locks, flipped off screens, patted pouches, stoppered canteens, felt to ensure a knife was to hand, adjusted straps, all before catching the eye of another trooper for a long second.

For Captain Sophie Bencker, the Space was her Rangers and this forest, was achieving the mission and bringing everybody home. The troopers’ HOTs were now sending in their KVIs (key vital indicators) which flitted across Bencker’s visor, confirming their biochems were stable: the Space rebalances itself.

Suddenly she was aware how quiet it had grown. Cat?

“Check for Sweepers,” she ordered. These autonomous weaponised droids were the delight of west coast EcoPuritans and ZenBuddies, each with a self-righteous agenda and no time for human messiness. Sweepers protected the forest and had the legal right to kill interlopers who didn’t signal an Exemption.

“Movement, one click northeast,” said Kossowski, and troopers turned and looked at her. Kossowski was on point, a comms role that demanded one’s visor-SAR to be always active and attention at 100%. Point was a prime target for snipers. On the edge of Bencker’s mind a wind blew down the neurolink as chunks of data fed in from Cat already speeding towards the unidentified threat.

“Moving erratically… in our direction,” said Kossowski.

“Could be a Sweeper, Captain,” said Nurri, frowning, and with reason.

Their Exemption was active so there should be no problem. But the briefing had said the area was empty of Sweepers and likely hostiles.

“The drone?” asked Bencker, looking around for Levi. She had just touched her sleeve panel to raise the collective EM defence bubble again when suddenly she gasped as if hit in the gut, feeling her feet begin to slide. Koch had raised his rifle toward the northeast but was already crumpling to his knees. In the same instant Bencker’s own suit-bubble was activated—Cat’s doing—as she pivoted to throw herself on top of the Captiva and everything went dark.

* *

Seated in PC Command outside Eureka, northern California, Operations Controller Ellis squinted at the big wallscreen. “Bencker’s unit?” He’d never gotten used to the Consortium’s obligatory “team.”

“Offline, Sir. And we’re trying to confirm a sonic pulse.”

“Sonic? Out there?”

“Trying to identify but interference is heavy.” An understatement, given canopy density and high hydrothermal humidity.

“Find them,” said Ellis as calmly as he could manage.

Sonics were not standard on Sweepers, so that should rule out a rogue droid, or so he hoped. He had maybe 30 minutes before this “situation” leaked to the Consortium’s ears-and-eyes and his red desk telephone went berserk. Turning his head from side to side to ease his neck muscles, he walked oh so casually out of the Ops Room to his office. Closing the door he activated the bugscan: all clear. Carefully he punched a code into his private phone. After a lapse, another phone buzzed far away.

“Marvin.” Ellis heard his codename with relief despite its nerdy ring. “What a pleasant surprise,” said a rough, careful female voice.

“Aunty,” he replied in what he hoped was a neutral tone: This cloak-and-dagger stuff was not his game. He paused, then: “The lady. She’s disappeared on mission in Snowbird. Her unit is down, no movement.” Silence. “We’re waiting confirmation on a rogue sonic pulse.”

“And Cat?” asked the woman after a beat.

“Active, was active for nearly an hour after the incident, then nothing.”

Ellis heard the slight seeping of breath from ex-Lieutenant M’Gele, officially KIA. She’d served under Sophie Bencker’s father and her Shibriya dagger would reply to any who dared speak a word against the Colonel.  After MB7 her missing body was just one of the strange things that had happened that day. She had survived, and only Sophie and Ellis knew this, which suited M’Gele just fine.

“If Cat is moving then the lady is too. If you have no indications of further attack then we can assume she decided to go dark.” Just like that day years ago at MB7 with her colonel in their last battle. The entire squad, an ambush—though by whom had not been clear.

“Keep me informed, please.” She hung up. Ranger Sophie Bencker, with the blue-eyes of her father and a ferocity all her own, was going to hunt. “Be without mercy and find your song, little leopard,” M’Gele said to the shadows. She touched the red garnet at her throat, remembering the promise she’d made to her Colonel as the light had left his eyes: I will protect your daughter.

Ellis sat, not moving. He too was back to that day at MB7, as the young Watcher in Rome EuroCommand following Colonel Bencker’s unit, seeing events unfold on screen, recalling the carnage found later at the mining base. Taking a deep breath he slowly let it out. Tonight would normally be an at-home with his wife Paula and their two little girls, for pizza and TV. But not this night.

* *

‘‘Dad.” Captain Sophie Bencker flashed back in cinematic microseconds. “Dad dad dad.”

If only she could have known him as one soldier to another. Would he approve of her tatoos, and her shaven head, devoid of the golden locks he’d so loved? He might balk at CAT and its neurolinks; he used to look at their dog Mifty and just grunt, and it had seemed to work between them.

Her father’s image wobbled; the eyes changing to red and Cat looking down at her. Clarity flowed along their link. But never make assumptions: “Identify!” She said with difficulty, and felt its purring of approval. Bagheera entered her mind, the private name she’d given Cat, taken from a story dad used to read to her. Then down came Breathe, and Cat’s own deep breathing began to pace and calm her own.

“I’m good.” SAR was re-establishing itself.

“Nurri?” Nothing. “Levi? Kossowski? Cooper?… Janssen? Kelly, Fernandez?”  Cat, Sitrep!

Down the neurolink came images of troopers scattered on the ground, none moving, and: Levi has gone. There was no signal from the drone. What the hell happened?

Swift activation of her HOTSuit had saved her and the Captiva. Need to move, she thought-sent. Cat replied with an image of the woman and a warning. Bencker flashed back: she comes with us. Intel, survival.

With a growl Bagheera bounded off, his sense-data flitting across her visor. Bencker nodded to the woman who sprung off fast, following Cat with ease. Bencker could see that this was her land. Levi. WTF?

* *

The team’s drone had returned, its control now overridden by CSZ Command. It hovered over the clearing and the scattered troopers of Bencker’s unit, then descended over each body. Away in the Ops Room, all eyes were riveted to the big wallscreen. As each face came into close-up the trooper’s name appeared in a side column. They looked peaceful, thought Ellis. A message came onscreen: two MIA, Captain Bencker and Lieutenant Levi.

“Can we get a fix on them?” asked Ellis. “And what about the Cat?”

“Negative, for the moment. Damage, or environmental interference,” said a young operator.

Ellis glanced at the red phone. “Levi,” he said quietly. An inevitable shitstorm was heading his way once Levi Sr in corporate HQ came looking for an explanation of a lost team that included his son—and for just a few seconds of footage. Heads would roll. He recalled a saying of Colonel Bencker’s: “When playing poker, remember it’s always serious, even when they say it isn’t.” As a rookie Watcher listening to the Colonel over a beer and totally overawed, Ellis had thought this unbelievably cool. Now he was beginning to see what it could mean, and didn’t like it.

“Keep looking, see what Narciss comes up with,” Ellis ordered. Narciss, their mighty AI sitting on photonic quantum hardware, was there to facilitate decision-making. But in the particularly fluid “fog of war” they had to confront nowadays it was of little use. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts,” he said under his breath, adding: “Keep safe, Captain Sophie Bencker.”

“We have one alive!”  All eyes in the Ops room flew to the wallscreen. There was an arm slowly rising. Ellis felt sick.

“Trooper Nurri, sir,” said the operator.

Ellis nodded. Nurri, tough bastard. And the Games don’t do immediate evac so I have to leave him, at least until Editorial decide how they can use him. He just has to survive the next few hours.

* *

The two women had stopped by a pool. The one with the black ponytail approached the small waterfall, and slipped behind the curtain of water. Bencker followed into the cave.

“We are undetectable here, the water and the rock,” said the Captiva, then: “Take this off,” touching the neck bracelet. Those eyes. Without you I’ll probably die here. Bencker removed the bracelet. The woman gently rubbed her throat; “I will prepare some food,” she said.

* *

They were sitting by a small fire. “It’s good,” said Bencker, carefully spooning the hot plant stew from a bowl in her lap.

“You will piss out the meds. Your body needs to rebalance to survive here.” Bencker paused in eating. “And you will take off the suit.”

My HOTS? “No friggin way!” Bencker’s eyes flashed. “I need to be in contact for my unit. They—”

“They are probably dead.” Then, matter-of-factly: “You would have heard something by now.” She waited, watching Bencker. “You must cut all comms to your base. And you cannot jog for long in the suit,” she said with finality. Rummaging in a wooden box, she handed Bencker a shirt, trousers, and top like her own, in a rough grey-green fabric. “Keep your link to the…” nodding towards the mouth of the cave, “but cut its comms to your base.”

Outside a shadow moved and a growl came down the link. Cat, cool it! This woman knows her shit.

“Also you smell wrong. Swim, wash.” She is used to giving orders, Sophie saw, but still didn’t move. The woman looked at her: “You stopped the soldier killing me. You covered me in the attack. Now I protect you.” She had brought out thick blankets, “At night it gets cold.”

* *

Later, the fire down to embers. Under blankets they were close for warmth, semi-naked.

“What is your name?” Bencker asked. The woman didn’t answer, but stretched her hand to touch the leather-bound Odyssey lying between Bencker’s breasts.

“I do not know you yet,” said the woman, looking frankly at Bencker’s body. “What is this book?”

I asked dad the same question. “Stories of ancient warriors.” Remembering his words, she added, “They were mighty as trees.” The woman nodded, and for the first time, smiled.

“My father said those times were violent, men were violent, a few were godlike. They fought knowing that any moment could bring the terror of gods in blinding light, and all a warrior could do was pray, ‘may the gods be on my side.’”

“Your stories are of people and the desire to be like gods. They could have chosen to be like trees, to be great without making the gods jealous.”

“Trees are dying, they get cut down,” replied Bencker too quickly.

The woman looked her full in the face. “We talk to our dead.”

Uh huh, mushrooms. Bencker was beginning to feel lost.

They stared into the fire. “I think your father is proud of you,” offered the woman. Bencker turned away from the fire, her gaze dropping to the dagger, her fingers resting on the scabbard.

“He gave me this Shibriya, a Christmas present. A week later came the funeral-drone carrying his ashes.”

It had been a clumsy, New Year’s Day media attempt to turn the Colonel into a posthumous legend as a prelude to the first Consortium Games. But by raising her teenage middle finger to the drone’s camera and the world, Sophie Bencker had become the angel of self-contained, traumatized anger, perfect for social media and its self-elected obsessiveness. Then she’d gone off-grid (keeping the details vague), eventually reappearing as a trained soldier hardened by pain. Now Consortium eyes and various nutters tracked the maverick Captain Bencker, Ranger. She was top dollar, with her tanned features and the sapphire eyes of her dad.

“I am sorry,” said the woman, putting out her hand gently to touch a shoulder. Bencker turned back, their eyes found each other. On the cave wall the dying fire threw their shapes which moved as if borne on the soft evening wind.

* *

It was first light and cold outside and they dressed quickly, then sat to eat in silence. Cupping her hands around a steaming mug the woman said, “You will know my name when I am sure of you.” Then added in a quieter voice: “I do not want the loss of you.”

WTF? Bencker’s gut churned. She knew about loss, her father, and now her squad.

“Do you know what happened to my troopers?” she asked.

“I was tracking you for a week.”

Bencker stared at her. “A week! But when we captured you—”

“I let myself be captured.” The words hung in the air. “We can talk later. Now we have to move. This is not a game, there are dangers.”

All clear came over the neurolink. Cat was blended into the forest shades, hard to see. All was still.

“Where are we going?”  Gotta keep my head straight.

“Into the deep woods.”  Bencker opened her mouth to ask another question but was cut off: “Now.”

Captain Sophie Bencker realized that she was going to have to trust the woman with her life. She already did so with Cat. For a soldier such trust was normal; it bound comrades to each other and to each waking day and each long night; trust defined them in a way that was absolute. But this woman was not a comrade in arms. Nor was she a stranger anymore. Bencker had unveiled herself to this woman, and with an intimacy she never showed. They were also bound together by danger. From now, uncertainty and danger would vie in her life with her capacity to trust, and this tension would be her Space. One hand resting on the hilt of her Shibriya, she looked up at the canopy far above and smiled.

“Ready?” asked the woman. Bencker nodded.

The woman set off at a jog through the shadows and mist among the trees. Her strong fluid gait reminded Bencker of another, many years ago: Lieutenant M’Gele. This land is their land. Now for Ranger Captain Sophie Bencker, the song of her hunt had begun.

“So, you feel the earth rotating under your feet?”

As Specialist Torres grasped tightly to the doorframe of the CO’s office, a litany of questions flashed before Captain Savalas’ mind, least of which involved the earth’s gravitational pull.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s why you’re holding onto my doorframe?”

Torres struggled to keep his feet from slipping out from under him, “It’s gravity, sir. I think I’m losing touch with it.”

Torres’s gravitational issues manifested shortly after the Fiasco at Bunker Hill.  Squad Leader Vogel opted to destroy the pillars holding up the roof of a bunker filled from floor to ceiling with artillery shells and propellant, effectively walling up the munitions in a concrete sarcophagus.

“Losing touch with gravity?”

“It’s causing me balance issues, sir.”

“Try adding weight to your IBA,” Savalas said as he pointed at Torres’s ballistic vest. “Increase your mass and you increase the force of gravity.”

As fate would have it, Torres had been selected to pop the five-minute time fuse on the bunker. Perhaps because of a faulty initiator, static electricity, even operator error, the charges detonated early, hurling Torres twenty feet into the air. Within seconds dozens of 122 mm rockets—initiated by the heat of the artillery propellant—soared through the sky, garnering the Fiasco title. His ears still ringing from the blast wave, Torres lay prone as the Grad’s high explosive warheads pulverized the earth around him. Blaming himself, Vogel threw Torres over his back and ran half a Klick through hell, carrying him to safety.

Once back at Charlie Base the medics checked out Torres, confused about his inability to stand upright. With no visible injuries present, they recommended he inform the Company CO of his bizarre ailment.

After Savalas informed Sergeant Vogel of Torres’s strained relationship with gravity, he radioed the combat stress team, requesting that an Army psychiatrist be sent out to Charlie Base. In the meantime, Vogel took preventative measures, adding as much weight as possible to increase his mass.

Vogel double checked Torres’s IBA as he held fast to the bumper of a Humvee, “Two drums of 7.62 ammunition?”

“Check.”

“Two drums of 5.56 ammunition?”

“Check.”

“Eight M-16 magazines of twenty rounds?”

“Check.”

With over one hundred pounds of weight added to his vest, Torres was little more than anthropomorphic armory. After taking a deep breath, Torres let go of the bumper and cautiously stepped toward Vogel. Unencumbered by a vest that would cause even an airborne ranger to stoop, Torres’s steps slowly turned into leaps. Then the leaps turned into jumps. Within moments Torres was bounding around the motor pool, mimicking the movements of a lunar spacewalk. Vogel’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

*

The psychiatrist arrived the next day. He took a seat across from Torres who clung tightly to the chair’s arm rests. The psychiatrist stared at his laptop computer screen and ruled out every known ailment: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, schizo-affective, obsessive compulsive disorder, even gender dysphoria. Torres was perfectly sane.

“Perfectly sane?” said a perplexed Savalas.

“That’s right, Captain, but I’ll need a second opinion.”

“You declared him perfectly sane. Why do you need a second opinion?”

“Good question,” the psychiatrist said, zipping up his laptop. “In the meantime, I’m requesting a physiatrist check for brain or spinal injuries.”

The physiatrist was stationed miles away in the Green Zone. He informed Savalas that he’d arrive in two days. In the interim, Torres’s gravitational condition took a turn for the worse. His bounds became increasingly difficult to control, and he was often seen jumping over the TOC and the derelict two-story building they slept in. Vogel added even more weight to his vest: two 50 Cal barrels, a pouch of satchel charges, and several bandoliers of 7.62 ammunition.

*

The physiatrist arrived as scheduled. He checked for everything: traumatic brain injury, herniated disks, stroke, muscle and joint pain, even Skier’s thumb. After a lengthy examination, the physiatrist informed Savalas that Torres’s body was completely normal.

“Completely normal?” Savalas said, his brow furrowed into a perfect v.

“That’s correct, Captain. However, I’ll need a second opinion.

“You said his body is normal. Why do you need a second opinion?”

“Good question,” said the physiatrist as he flipped through Torres’s file. “In the meantime, I’ve requested that a physicist investigate his gravitational issues.”

The Air Force physicist was stationed miles away in Doha. He stressed that the earliest he could fly out to Charlie Base was the following week. This minor detail troubled Savalas; he’d noticed a decline not only in Torres’s gravitational issues, but in his mental health as well. After tying sandbags to his feet to keep him grounded—Torres became increasingly manic. He spent hours on the internet studying gravitational lensing, observational reference frames, and inertia. His mania became singularly focused on a planet named Gliese 876 d, a mere fifteen light years away.

Torres turned to Vogel as he escorted him out of the internet café. “Do you know that there are no wars on Gliese 876 d?”

The day before the physicist was due to arrive, Vogel burst into the CO’s office. “Sir, it’s Torres!” he said, struggling to catch his breath. “His gravitational condition is getting worse!”

Savalas followed Vogel to the motor pool where he was rendered speechless. Torres – with his four drums of ammunition, eight magazines, two 50 Cal barrels, satchel charges, four bandoliers, and several sand bags attached to his feet – was bounding across Charlie Base at a height of 200 meters.

“Get a rope,” Savalas said pointing to a nearby post. “We’ll tie his feet to the ground to keep him from floating away!”

*

With Torres’s feet firmly secured to a post, the physicist arrived a day later. Standing beside a white board in Savalas’s office, he derived all of Newton’s Laws, including Lorentz transformations. With a board full of subscripts, superscripts, letters, brackets, parenthesis, and commas he concluded that Torres’s condition was mathematically unworkable, and therefore, impossible.

“Impossible?” Savalas said as he stared at the board full of equations. “Lemme guess, you need a second opinion?”

“Not at all,” said the physicist as he erased the white board. “Newton’s Laws are infallible.”

“So how you do explain him bounding 200 feet in the air?”

“Parlor tricks. But I must admit, his skills as an illusionist are superlative.”

Prior to leaving, the physicist agreed to ask an astronomer about Torres’s obsession with Gliese 876 d, a planet that – as far as the astrophysics were concerned—didn’t exist.

Vogel escorted Torres out of the TOC, his eyes focused on a large question mark Torres had shaved onto the top of his head.

“Why’d you shave a question mark onto your head?”

“Because I’ve found the answer to the greatest question of them all.”

“And that is?”

“Are we alone in the universe,” Torres said with a placid smile.

*

The following morning Savalas received a radio call from the psychiatrist informing him he had overlooked Torres’s flat affect—unusual given his gravitation condition. His conclusion was that Torres was suffering from schizophrenia.

“Schizophrenia?” Savalas said into the phone. “You said he was sane!”

“That’s why I asked for a second opinion Captain.”

Immediately after hanging up with the psychiatrist the physiatrist called him on the radio. Struggling to form a coherent sentence, the physiatrist briefed Savalas that he had misread his brain injury examination

“Traumatic brain injury!” said a frustrated Savalas. “You said his body was normal!”

“That’s why I asked for a second opinion, Captain.”

After hanging up on the physiatrist, Savalas received a call from the physicist. Unlike the previous two conversations, the physicist reiterated that Torres’s gravitation condition was mathematically impossible. But his obsession with Gliese 876 d was most confounding.

“There is in fact a planet that goes by that name in the Aquarius constellation, but…”

“But what?”

“It was discovered less than ten hours ago.”

Savalas dropped the hand mic as the color drained from his face. He ran out of the TOC and noticed that Torres’s rope, previously taut, was lying slack.

Standing motionless at the end of the rope, Savalas stopped beside Vogel. Both men stared at the four drums of ammunition, eight magazines, two 50 Cal barrels, satchel charges, bandoliers, and four sand bags lying on the ground. Torres had cut the rope fasted around his ankle.

Vogel stared upward, straining his eyes. “Torres… he’s gone, sir.”

“Gone? Where?”

“Space, I guess. Gliese 876 d.”

Savalas sighed as he ran his hand over his closely cropped hair, “You think he’s coming back?”

“Coming back?” said a bewildered Vogel. “Why?”

“If he’s coming back I can write him up AWOL. Otherwise, it’s desertion.”

 

Brian Barry Turner’s short story, “Gravity of War” originally appeared in So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (Issue No. 7) and appears here with the writer’s permission.

 

Here on Wrath-Bearing Tree we write a lot about ways in which things are imperfect—culturally, politically, institutionally. We often point out examples of things that go wrong. People who lie or use faulty logic to advance unethical or selfish agendas. We focus on negativity in part because we’re combat veterans, and have seen bad consequences of lazy thinking and decision-making. The other thing that units us, if anything, is that we share a basic conviction that things could be better. Especially when it comes to media, and entertainment.

It’s not easy to create ethical and entertaining drama that uplifts at the same time that it provides laughter. Without resort to conflict—usually in the form of sex or violence—stories fall flat. Why consume an account of someone’s perfect day? Few movies manage to leave a majority of their audiences feeling better (rather than exhausted), because it’s very difficult to accomplish this. Recent examples include Hot Tub Time Machine and Safety Not Guaranteed, both of which manage to deliver without relying much on violence or sex.

Violence and sex from the male perspective are hallmarks of most mainstream films. In the fourth week of April, I watched or re-watched four movies: Star Wars: Rogue One, LA Confidential, American Beauty, and the upcoming Tomorrow Ever After. The first three movies are violent fantasies that appear to hate women and poor people, and maybe people in general. Characters in the film earn their punishments in a variety of ways, but those ways all come down to the alienation wrought by dissatisfaction with a society built on sexual exploitation and the urge to destroy. They offer dark visions of human nature, and are at heart nihilistic visions of the past, present, and future.

Tomorrow Ever After is different. In it, the principle conflicts that unfold within and between characters are existential, based on questions about their purpose—they are not transactional or punitive. Conflicts unfold within characters as they grapple with the constraints of living within a patriarchal, capitalist system. In this system (that of our present time—the movie is set in 2015) women are systematically oppressed by men, who are systematically oppressed by a system in which housing is not guaranteed, jobs are difficult to come by, and money is the mechanism by which people and items are valued. In Tomorrow Ever After, this period of human history is referred to as “The Great Despair.”

One of the film’s most impressive accomplishments is its ability to represent the problems posed by money in a realistic, relatable way, while simultaneously making it clear that this situation is unnecessary—ridiculous, even. The film’s satirical touch is so light that it’s almost unseen, but it guides everything, and fills Tomorrow Ever After with humor and optimism. A film about the evils of sexist patriarchy and capitalism sounds like it would be annoying or boring, but this is not the case with Tomorrow Ever After. I suspect that this is because it spends so little time moralizing, and because the director and actors are so good. There are no cynical or clichéd moments where a character pauses to deliver some memorable line, no posturing, no bullshit. Given the conceit about time travel, this is nothing short of extraordinary.

The pacing is wonderful. There isn’t a single moment in the film where someone watching is lost or displaced, save for the very beginning (this is to be expected in a movie about time travel). Contrast this with Rogue One, or LA Confidential, or even American Beauty, all of which make themselves known only through repeated screenings, or by reading secondary material. Tomorrow Ever After is not interested in spectacle, nor is it particularly interested in rendering judgment—it is a parable about all of us, and how we live, and so there are no bad characters to murder, no suffering characters that do not themselves possess the means of their own redemption.

The most impressive accomplishment of Tomorrow Ever After, however, that its characters are believably written, and the actors capably bring them to life. Because the conflicts encountered by many characters are all basic and comprehensible, one finds oneself empathizing with everyone in the film. This accomplishment confirms what appears to be Tomorrow Ever After’s chief hypothesis: that when we view each other with empathy, and treat each other with kindness, life becomes much more enjoyable and pleasant. In this way, Tomorrow Ever After functions not only as a morale parable, but also as evidence that its hypotheses are true. After all, if it’s possible to make an film that engages, inspires, and entertains without laser battles, sex, violence used as a vehicle for redemption, or murder—Tomorrow Ever After promises none of these elements—maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to make a better world, too.

 

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The tired, simplistic, bargain-basement Cold War narrative of WWII sucks and it’s time we got over it. According to my eighth grade history teacher, the USA won WWII by beating the Nazis and the Japs. If we hadn’t beaten them, they would’ve conquered the world. That’s how the story goes, and many board games and video games embrace it. It’s comforting, comfortable bullshit. That version of history—the $59.99 version where you get to kill the bad Nazi colonel or fight buddies multiplayer with antique weaponry—ignores basic facts that are widely available outside academia. Chief among those facts is the near-pathetic weakness of Germany and Japan heading into WWII, as well as the wholesale aggrandizement of our intervention and participation in WWII in ways that make us feel good about ourselves but also totally distorts how war looks and how reality worked and works.

Being honest about how WWII went down and what was actually at stake is important because history is important, and shapes how we evaluate our surroundings, our present, our acts and actions. This, as it turns out, is the thematic heart of Phillip K. Dick’s science fiction dystopian novel “The Man in the High Castle.” Dick, at his best when using strange and challenging scenarios to interrogate the relationship between individual and society, contrives an alternate reality where America loses WWII when the Germans develop and drop A-bombs, forcing us into negotiated surrender, occupation, and servitude. The novel—and the series—is an incredibly subversive take on how history operates, both in the logic of the story, and in the logic of our own reality.

Amazon (not one to shy away from a sexy narrative featuring Nazis) has taken what was in Dick’s hands an interesting meditation on the nature of perception and put together a mostly-faithful rendition that promises to entertain and educate viewers with a cautionary tale about what it feels like to live under a totalitarian dictatorship in America. I watched the first couple episodes using my Prime membership. And I was mostly impressed.

The series is set in a counterfactual past—it seems to be the 1960s—and begins with a shot of two men in an old-timey movie theater (the younger of which is Joe Blake, who promises to be a major character in the first season) watching a lousy piece of fascist, pro-status-quo propaganda. This is a subtle nod to you, the viewer of the show. Films go on to play a big role in the series, as well as peoples’ reactions to film—in fact, the single greatest threat to the “Nazi” led reality is a series of subversive films showing a reality in which the Allies win, and the Nazis and Japanese lose. Both in Dick’s novel and the series, this is an honest and accurate idea of how Hitler seems to have viewed narrative—a fact echoed in “Inglorious Basterds,” Tarantino’s masterpiece that deals with similar themes. People watching the film of Allied victory in World War II are transported, blissfully and tearfully watching and re-watching footage, in moments that are reminiscent of our own reactions to this type of video on Memorial and Veterans Day, on the History Channel. Where “The Man in The High Castle” takes flight, however, and removes itself from just another nostalgic retread celebrating victory of freedom over tyranny is in its secondary or tertiary level, wherein the critique ends up being not of the Nazis, but of ourselves and our consumption of narrative history.

The series is filled with these double-scenes, moments that have special resonance on multiple levels, which is true to Dick’s vision and the intention of his fictionalized world. Things in dystopian Nazi-America are a bit shoddier than they should be, given the timeframe. There’s a great deal of factory labor that’s put front and center in the series as part of the economic backdrop to the Nazi-occupied society, and much of the show feels like noir. If the Nazis had won, the show claims implicitly, things would be worse in America than they are today.

But not that much worse. Noah Berlatsky noticed this same phenomenon, watching the show earlier this year. In a review for the Atlantic, he found the show to be subversive in its claim that life would have been crummier, lousier, but not *fundamentally* worse than it has been for our real actual selves. There are no lines for food, no dead people lying in the streets. Gangs of Nazis and Japanese police chase down pro-democracy “resistance” advocates, but the people who keep their heads down and work hard are rewarded. It’s not difficult, in other words, to imagine that if there were a group of pro-Nazi, pro-imperial Japanese agents running around today with films showing how in *their* reality Hitler and Hirohito won, our own government would be clamping down on their activities, and would view them as a direct threat. Would our real police be shooting them down on the streets? Well—people who are devout followers of that violent brand of Islam sweeping the Middle East aren’t exactly treated with hospitality when the US security apparatus gets their hands on them.

Suburbia in Nazi-America is inhabited by Nazi party members and functionaries, but apart from kids having to wear silly school uniforms, things are about the same. Kitschy television shows the type of which people consumed in the 1950s and 1960s are on the air, but with a Nazi twist. There seems to be a functioning interstate system (Eisenhower is, after all, said to have been inspired by Hitler’s autobahn, so this is not totally surprising).

In the Midwest, the truck Joe Blake is driving blows a tire, and he gets help from a Nazi policeman who offers him help and part of a sandwich. During the exchange, Blake spots a tattoo on the policeman’s arm, and the policeman self-identifies as a veteran of the war against Nazi Germany—then claims not to even remember what they’d been fighting for. White flakes are falling from the sky, and Blake asks the trooper what they are. The policeman cheerfully volunteers that “Tuesdays they burn cripples, the terminally ill… [they’re a] drag on the state.” In this series (and in the book), people in the south and Midwest have adapted easily and enthusiastically to Nazi rule.

The resistance, on the other hand, is made up of (frankly) irritating ideologues who rant about “freedom,” which, presumably, is the kind of thing Moderate Syrians wanted in 2011, or the kind the West enjoys today—contextual freedom. “The Man in the High Castle” deserves huge credit for showing the resistance critically, and giving them real weight, real complexity, rather than simply having them be the sympathetic heroes to whom everyone is accustomed. Even though many of the resistance freedom fighters don’t know what freedom actually is, it doesn’t stop them from expressing willingness to die for the idea—to “do the right thing,” as Joe Blake says. Thus the show subtly but undeniably reinforces the notion that perhaps the world we see today—the real world—is not as we imagine. This is not what our noble ancestors fought for.

Interesting side-note—in Europe, when you talk with people it seems like everyone’s family was in the resistance in WWII. I’ve always found that fascinating, like, if everyone’s grandparents were all in the resistance, how did the Germans conquer so much territory? But I digress.

So far, the series has decided to portray the Nazis and Japanese as brutal if thuggish occupiers, with an incredibly sophisticated and all-encompassing intelligence-security apparatus. The Nazis are recognizably Nazis—tite uniforms, imposing architecture, annoying habits, and superior military-aviation technology. The Japanese, on the other hand, turn out to be eastern spiritualists who do martial arts on the side and are in the logic of the show (and the book) presented as morally superior to the Germans. Gone are the massacres they carried out against whites, Chinese, and “inferior” people in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere—in this show, they are unwilling puppets of the Germans, occupiers almost in name only.

Which is where the show’s deviation from the book and challenge to History as we know it begins to get really interesting—in the logic of the show, Hitler is the one who insisted on détente with the Japanese at the end of World War II, and who insisted on peace. Hitler, in other words, is the peace-bringer. In the world of the show, Goebbles and Himmler are jockeying to replace Hitler as the Fuhrer, and that’s seen as a bad thing.

Another decision that’s sure to bring the show in for criticism is its handling of Jewish characters. One of the main characters in the book (and thus far in the show) is a Jewish worker with artistic aspirations named Frank Fink. To begin with, he produces “degenerate” art, which is an odd confirmation of Nazi propaganda (he appears in the logic of the show’s world to be guilty of the thing that Nazis expect him to be guilty of). Then, he’s captured and presented with what appears to him to be a dilemma—save his girlfriend, or save his family.

And this is where things get really strange, in the show. The audience, at a certain point, understands that it doesn’t matter what Fink chooses—his girlfriend is already being tracked by the Nazis. A member of the resistance, Randall, warns Fink that if he gives her up, he’ll sacrifice his soul, a point that is reinforced to the audience because viewers know that whether Fink gives her up or not is completely irrelevant to her fate. The Japanese don’t know this either, though, so they threaten to kill Fink and his sister and her family, for being Jewish. The Japanese claim not to be racists like the Nazis (as already described) in the sense that presumably their racism is directed toward other Asians, and not based on religious discrimination, so it doesn’t matter to them whether they kill Frank or not. But they do end up killing the family—Fink’s sister, his niece, and nephew, with an improved form of Zyclon-B gas. It’s an accident, bad timing. The Japanese apologize, which is a neat bit of Holocaust-logic—this is how occupied people are treated, and especially Jewish citizens, as essentially expendable.

In return, Frank’s character swears vengeance in the police station. “If you need Jews, you know where to find me,” he says, enraged and embittered at the Japanese decision to kill his family (as they promised to do if he did not give over the useless information, which he refuses to do). The Japanese police chief looks him in the eye and says “I know.” Because it’s a totalitarian society! OF COURSE they know that he’s Jewish, and where to find him. The governments know almost everything about almost everyone in their societies—much like the totalitarian governments imagined in 1984. It’s also worth pointing out that the entire city where this takes place is under imminent threat of being destroyed by a hydrogen bomb wielded by the Nazis.

The decision to use a Jewish character to unpack complicated philosophical questions of causality and moral agency is dangerous and potentially offensive—maybe even certainly offensive. Because to do so puts the viewer in the role of Holocaust victim—and the dystopian future imagined by Dick (and revisited by this series) means, if there are still Jewish people alive in America or anywhere, that the Holocaust is ongoing. It also makes the subtle point that we like or should like Frank Fink, which implies that we ourselves are in a sort of cultural Holocaust, an annihilation of identity, which is an interesting thought experiment but one that doesn’t seem like it’s welcome yet in popular culture.

Another way in which the series may provoke controversy is that the basic premise—that America could have lost World War II under any circumstances—plays on bad history. Our narrative of the war overplays German and Japanese strengths while underplaying the Allies’ economic and military might. Here’s the truth: Germany and Japan were doomed to lose World War II in almost EVERY reality. Their military accomplishments despite that fundamental weakness were extraordinary, but testify more to the astonishing incompetence of American, French, British, Chinese and Russian political leadership and bad generalship early on than to any advantage enjoyed by the Nazis or Japanese. In The Man in the High Castle, the Germans have developed the Atomic bomb before America—we now know that, despite provocative History Channel specials to the contrary, the Germans were nowhere near the bomb, although one of their scientists (Werner Heisenberg) got about one third as far as the entire Manhattan project with a hundredth of their budget before crapping out due to bad math. On top of this, the fact that WWII happened at all is due largely to greedy and grabbing western politicians who fucked over Germany at the end of World War I, hamstrung earnest diplomatic efforts at rapprochement during the depression, and manifested an almost-willful desire to misunderstand Hitler’s intentions in the mid- and late- 1930s. Knowledge of Nazi strengths versus Soviet and Allied strengths leads one inexorably to the conclusion that our dimension must be the only one in which the Nazis weren’t crushed before 1943—it’s a minor miracle they lasted until 1945.

An accurate characterization of Germany and Japan in WWII is not that they almost won—it’s that they almost lost, over and over again, until finally they didn’t not lose. That’s the true history of World War II. We fucked around and fucked things up until we decided, kind of, to sort things out, then lazily and shittly continued fucking off and underestimating the Nazis and Japanese until we eventually didn’t lose, as we were always going to.

Sorry mom’s dad and dad’s dad. It’s the truth.

The real genius of Dick’s novel, and of this series, is that there was and is a fascist threat in America, and it’s going on every day. Where a physical dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini (and, later, Stalin) was defeated, the result of that defeat was not freedom, actually. What we got is the corporate dictatorship we enjoy today, the anti-intellectual monopoly that began with LBJ and Nixon and the squares of Philip K. Dick’s day. These happy Eichmann-types have been replaced by well-meaning, bright-eyed Hillary Clinton supporters, Jeb Bush (wait does anyone support Bush?) workers, and the hordes shouting Donald Trump or Ben Carson’s name. They’re people developing apps or leveraging synergies in New York City or Palo Alto, California in order to make a couple bucks peddling the escapist farce that a human life should be so easy and predictable that one must never encounter anything unpleasant or inconvenient. They’re the social, corporate, cultural and technological fascists who will doom and damn our country more certainly than David Semel will direct himself into a box of unmet expectations from which he cannot escape by the beginning of Season Three.

End the series by (no later than) Season Two, David Semel. Don’t you screw us again.

After indulging in a fantasy where one gets to rebel vicariously against Nazis in an alternate universe, viewers may consider a more modest rebellion of not supporting the shittiest cast of Democratic and Republican candidates since Rutherford B. Hayes. Otherwise, the future dystopia imagined in this series has already come to pass.