Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America by Damien Lincoln Ober

Author:Damien Lincoln Ober [Ober, Damien Lincoln]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Lewis Morris :: January 22nd 1798

Lewis Morris looks into the brown liquor in his glass. He has a sip, says, “The Dream? More like a nightmare.”

And his daughter just nods and says, “Oh, Dad.”

He has another sip, says, “When I rebuilt Morrisania, I didn’t rebuild it in the Dream. I rebuilt it in the real.” He stomps his foot, but it doesn’t sound like a stomp. More like rotten fruit being dropped. He’s grown weak, her old dad. “People don’t want to do the work anymore to make the real better, so they spend all their time in the Dream instead. Here’s to John Adams. Once in a while, you got to remind them about how good the real is.”

“Any better idea than a war, Dad, to make the real more popular?”

Lewis Morris is finishing a sip, shaking off the burn. But it’s not whiskey he’s drinking. Lewis Morris is too sick to be trusted with alcohol. His daughter swapped it all out with watered‐down tea weeks ago. But he still drinks it, and still, somehow, it seems to get him drunk. “Why don’t you read your book, Dad?”

He’s waving, waving at things pestering him. “I don’t want to read any more books.”

“But it’s going to make me so sad, that book sitting there half‐unfinished.”

This idea he takes more seriously. It sobers him in the time of one long sigh. Perhaps he realizes just then that it’s not whiskey he’s been drinking. Or maybe he’s known this whole time and was playing drunk. “I thought I wanted to read it,” he says. “My last book. But then I decided I didn’t want to read anymore, not ever. And so I’m not going to. I’m just going to sit here and look at the world as I die. And as soon as the Dream is illegal, everybody else can go back to living and dying just like we all used to do.”

His daughter’s laughing. “Dad, they can’t make the Dream illegal.”

“Congress’s going to vote on it this session. Maybe in time to save this damn country too.”

“Dad!”

“How are we going to fight a war with the French when half the country’s claiming to be a different country and wants to go to war with England?” More of that soft stomping. “We need one country that can make one decision and stick to it.”

“How do you make everyone think the same thing? And I mean besides making Newnet illegal,” which she can’t even say without smiling. “People are always going to be screaming weird in the Dream.”

“Terminate their accounts is how.”

“The government can’t terminate avatars. What, just erase them?”

“Yes. That’s how democracy works. You vote for something you think should be illegal and if enough people vote that way, you make it illegal.”

“I don’t care how many votes you get, you can’t make Newnet illegal. It’ll be like killing someone, the government starts terminating profiles.”

“This house was burned down in the Revolution and I rebuilt it brick by brick and you’re telling me about an online profile in the Frank A.

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