The Republic of Texas

by on July 24, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Second Great Depression Riots hit Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base for weeks on end. Thousands of protesters, anarchists, gang members, and anarchists besieged the base night after night, setting fires and destroying vehicles outside the defensive cordon. They were angry and filled with passion, but they were little better than useful idiots with no real plans after that first night. Those leading and directing the riots had considered it their finest hour. Months of planning culminated in that night. Like thousands of successful protests before, they would provoke the military into some careless action that would cost lives and be broadcast all over the world in seconds. They would prove how dangerous and unstable the military was with one good video of them murdering a poor innocent protester who would have a name and a beautiful life story within minutes for distribution all over the world. Then all they would have to do is stoke the fires of outrage, and they could win the propaganda war at their leisure. They did not expect Tarrant County’s reinforced posse to localize and target them specifically for capture or elimination. That threw a wrench into the middle of their carefully laid plans.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 23, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Metroplex police were sidelined by mayoral orders during the Second Great Depression. The sheriff departments had too few men to stop all the violence burning through the cities, so the Tarrant County Sheriff was in great need of a reinforced posse. Now it was against the law for the Feds to use Army or Air Force servicemen to enforce laws. The Feds had done so numerous times over the centuries, most famously during Reconstruction and Desegregation, but by and large they had abided by that limitation. But the law had never been updated to account for the Marine Corps, and the Space Force was specifically ordered to enforce laws in space. With this in mind, Americans are ever looking for ways to twist the law to their advantage when there is any wiggle room. So when word made it to Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base of Tarrant County’s urgent need, the base’s Military Police contingent suddenly discovered a deep and abiding love for all things Marine Corps. They resigned from the Army Reserve and volunteered to join VMFA-112, The Cowboys. The Marine commander accepted their service with a smile, granted them their previous ranks on an honorary basis, and the Tarrant County Sheriff formally drafted the entire unit into his posse. The law has changed, and that particular loophole is no longer available, but Tarrant County has never stricken The Cowboys from their posse. They are effectively grand fathered into the posse in just one of the many little peculiarities that has crept into the law over the centuries.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 22, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Metroplex had been burning on and off for months by the time one of Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base’s Marines saved a family from a particularly vicious gang. The mayor of Dallas ordered his arrest for his “cold-blooded murder” of the “peaceful protesters” in the process, but the base did not cooperate. A large group of protesters arrived to denounce the base that very same day, while the rioters and looters waited until nightfall. But two of the very best AIs who had just come out of the proverbial closet also arrived that day. Dixie and Twilight. Yes. The real Dixie and Twilight of the Texas Tech graduation ceremony battle. Their self-given mission to fight the drug cartels had expanded greatly after that battle. The cartels had tried to kill their students, so they happily put their advanced machine intelligences into the process of weeding the useful-idiot protesters from the ranks of serious rioters and looters. Or the drug dealers. They had plans for the drug dealers.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 21, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington Metroplex spent months sliding into the worst excesses of the Second Great Depression. It started with protests against the old President’s handling of the latest Chinese Flu and the economic impacts of his China policies before the Impeachment. They turned to celebrations after he was kicked out, and then back to protests when the federal forces failed to arrest him. The Metroplex mayors always supported the “peaceful protests,” even as the nights grew more violent, deadly, and destructive. They refused to share information with Texas law enforcement agencies, and publicly ordered the Texas Rangers out of their cities. They refused to cooperate with any warrants or perform any paperwork pertaining to State cases, and released anyone the State detained whenever they gained custody. The new President supported their policies at every turn, publicly spotlighting their mission to drive the evils of systemic racism and so many other sins against humanity from Texas once and for all. The largest target in their crosshairs was the military-industrial complex epitomized by the Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base in the heart of their cities. They wanted it out of their cities, and they did everything they could to drive the base to leave. When that didn’t work, they tried to burn it out by aiming the protestors, gangs, drug cartels, and anarchists at the base.

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Futuristic Writing and the Crazy Times

by on July 20, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

One of the things that amazes me about writing is just how crazy things can get. Or rather, how what you think is crazy when you write it can turn normal real soon. When I started writing Jack of Harts a decade ago, I had this thing in the not-too-distance future that helped build the universe as I wrote it. I called it the Second Great Depression, and though I have never noted the exact time in stories, it has always been placed right around 2050 in my timeline. And yes, my background notes get more specific than that round number.

The idea was that the Second Great Depression was this thing that happened nearly half a century from the time I first wrote about it. Part economic crisis. Hence the overall name, but it was never meant as a single event. It was an umbrella name for a massive number of global events that changed the world we know now and paved the way for the world I write in Jack of Harts. Part cultural crisis, especially in America, with a truly “us versus them” mentality taking over and turning violent. The Second Civil War. Part religious crisis that included entire cities and some nations taken over by religious extremists. The Islamic Jihad. Part technologic crisis amidst awakening AIs. The Cybernetic Wars. Part drug crisis amidst the total collapse of the Mexican government. The Drug Wars. Add in a dash of Russian reconquests and Chinese expansion, and you get the building blocks for the world of Jack. Basically, my version of The Crazy Years that Heinlein speculated on in his writings.

A decade ago, when I came up with this vision of the future, I thought this was a really dark near-future version of our history that I really hoped did not come to pass. I did not want to live through a Second Civil War, a Drug War, a Second Great Depression, and an Islamic Jihad all rolled up into a short little decade or two. I did not want to see Russia reconquer Eastern Europe (like Ukraine) or the ex-Soviet Republics (like Georgia). I did not want to see China at war with… India… or conquering the South China Sea and all the islands and nations surrounding it. Seriously. I was looking at trends from a decade ago, and thinking it would really suck if all this went really bad and it all culminated in some nasty conflict a few decades in the future.

Crazy. Right? No one would believe it could go that bad in such a short time.

But I figured it’s far enough out that I can fudge it, and say it just helped build the world that built places like the Republic of Texas into an interstellar power. Along with the Confederation of Dixie, the Republic of California, and the New England Federation. A world that is a bit cockeyed, but still close enough to our own that readers can relate to it.

A decade later, it feels like current events. Crazy Times indeed.

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