Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore

Author:Scotto Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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I wanted to put on some tunes, but our taste in music was borderline incompatible—I wanted upbeat house music, and she wanted hardcore hip hop and I was like, maybe I’ll just pretend I can’t get Spotify to work. Eventually we settled on an old Tori Amos album we both happened to like, and then camped out in the bleachers, split a bottle of wine, and tried to chill. She seemed like she hadn’t been able to relax in a long time, and she didn’t want to talk about how she’d spent her last six months. But after a hint of tipsiness crept up on her, she started to open up.

“What aggravates me,” she said, “is how much hope I’d built up thinking that Alexander Reece might be on our side. But he just wants to run the world like every other rich old white dude. Even when he’s dead, he’s a rich old white dude at heart. He didn’t transcend, you know? And all that time we spent chasing you, we could have spent looking for ways to undermine the cabal. Now they’ve consolidated so much power that I don’t see a way to dislodge them. I’m not even sure anymore that it’s the right thing to do. They want to burn ten million minds to save the lives of eight billion people—maybe that’s an acceptable cost.”

I shook my head. “There’s got to be a more effective solution.”

“You don’t know that. And more to the point, even if there is one, you don’t have it.”

“But then what happens—when they use the shield, and the thunderstorm is gone—then what? Then we just go back to our ordinary lives, except oops, we’re subjects of the Empress now?”

“Oh, you’d prefer life back in your American oligarchic kleptocracy?” she scoffed. “One thing I will say about Violet Parker—she’s aiming her ruthlessness in very interesting directions.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she’s systematically repudiating elements of American society and it’s strangely satisfying to watch. I mean, here’s my favorite example. You have these federal agencies that are all truncated from the mothership, and she works her way through each one with a personal touch, merging FBI branches with the California Bureau of Investigation, that kind of thing. Well, she turns her attention to ICE and she schedules an all-hands meeting. Every local ICE office in the state hosts a live stream so she can address the whole team at once. And instead of the morale-boosting slide deck that all the other agencies got from her, she has every single one of those ICE agents arrested, and taken out into the streets, and publicly executed by firing squad.”

“What!”

“True story. She made it clear that day that if you lived in her California, you were not illegal, and that was like week four of her reign.”

“Who did she get to pull the trigger on these executions?”

“Ministers of Gorvod, as a matter of fact. Undocumented I’m told.”

“And this is your ‘favorite’ example?” I nearly shouted. “Since

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