2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [147]
Andre and his brother had to work instead of going to school just to keep their mother and sister from being thrown out of their crummy apartment. But Andre didn’t need school; he was a genius at mechanical stuff. From the very first video game he ever played, it was as if he saw how things worked from the inside out. He was short and wiry and not very attractive, and girls didn’t really take to him, which gave him even more time to bond with the machines. And when he first met Max at one of the early meetings, he felt like his purpose on earth was clear. He didn’t want to make the big statements—he would let Max do the talking—but he loved being the technical guy, and he was perfect at it.
Max passed out speed patches. An hour before the takeover they would place them on the insides of their thighs. The concept was simple, but highly effective. Snorting methamphetamine was too much of a rush; it was too fast and then too steep of a drop. The speed patch, as it was known, delivered a steady amount of the drug for twelve hours. Then they could either sleep or put on another one. They felt the rush, but it was even, and sometimes it was mixed with newer steroids, which made them feel almost like Superman.
Without the drugs none of this would ever happen. It was a simple fact that nobody ever hijacked anything on the natch. Something was always used to pump up these kinds of people, even if it was just booze, and Max and his group loved the patches. Earlier in the year, when they first bought them, they used them far too frequently; it was just so much fun. Andre built the model of the boat on his first patch and did it in ten hours. “Jesus Christ,” he said in his French-Belgian accent, “this would have taken me a week!”
Kathy Bernard had known that something was in Max Leonard’s system when she came to the house that day, and then a week later when he took her to dinner. It was more than Max being jittery. It was a look. A look of abandon. He didn’t even have that look when he climaxed; only the drug could produce it. But Kathy had no idea that these patches even existed. Then again, why would she? She wasn’t the one who was trying to make history.
* * *
Senator Markum took a late flight from Miami to Washington after his son-in-law’s triumph in front of AARP. His office was already deluged with communications regarding the appearance. When someone could arouse such large groups of people the way Shen Li did, everyone in politics knew about it instantly. The same way that political convention speeches used to make stars overnight, now the omnipresent delivery systems made it happen anywhere and anytime, providing the moment warranted it. And Shen Li’s speech did. With countless millions of viral videos always in the air, only one currently showed a five-minute standing ovation given by thousands of older people. And Li’s was it. People watched it over and over, only adding to his growing legend.
Markum was good friends with the Speaker of the House, a slight man named Henry Roman. Roman was from Oregon, and Markum had helped him get elected a decade earlier and was a big booster in his rise to Speaker.
The ebb and flow between the two houses of Congress never changed. There were periods when they hated each other and periods when they worked closely together. If Shen Li had come to prominence ten years earlier, it would have been impossible to even raise the possibility that Markum had on his mind. But with everything that was going on, with Los Angeles rising higher each day, looking more modern and beautiful than any other American