"Ragtime Nightingale"

If you listened closely to the wind coming up the coastal plain, you could hear the show-tunes drifting from brightly-lit Culiacan.

Sid & Syd were the big names in that Mexican city for the night. Kids, tweens, teens, and the occasional basement-dwelling college post-grad begged and pleaded for their parents to bring them to Sid & Syd Live!, where America's favorite pair of twins would re-enact the funniest scenes from Season 1 of their show on AmericaTeenV in front a live audience, not to mention sing a few songs, including their famed duet in the title sequence, along with singles from their upcoming album which offered some sort of cross between new school techno-pop and old-school California skateboard rock, of which Sid was noted to be a fan. To further sweeten the deal, there would be interviews, Q&A with the audience, and to top it all off, the Governor of Sinaloa himself would be there, along with the local mayor, to give them the ceremonial key to the city. Both of their daughters were huge fans of Sid & Syd, or perhaps even more so, their in-universe eccentric Hispanic next-door neighbor, Pablo Jorge Jesus “Manny” Ramirez, a scheming delinquent always looking to earn a quick buck. Laid-back Sid often became Manny’s sidekick/victim, but no-nonsense Syd (usually) put her foot down, foiling more than one of Manny’s schemes. Their initially antagonistic relationship soon took on an enemy-to-lovers quality, lovers still TBD but the signs are there, much to the delight of preteen groupchats, /co/, and whatever’s left of Tumblr.

Yes, not only were the Governor and Mayor at the show that night in Culiacan, but so were many city officials and local police leaders, not to mention a few unsavory characters that Sinaloa was known for, being home to several cartels and all. As brutal as their methods, as terrible as their products, even the cartels would agree to call a truce on the night Sid & Syd were in town, for the sake of everyone’s kids. For both government and syndicate alike, guards were down.

This was noted by one Lieutenant Jazz Humducker, surveilling the windswept coastal plain of Sinaloa from his foxhole high up in the mountains of that province, briefly mesmerized by the starlit waves lapping at the distant shore down below. Small villages were strung along the coastal highway; folk music drifted from guitars playing from stoops and porches up into the mountains. It reminded Humducker of Cuba; he had served a tour of duty there, the music from the villages slightly different, but their shared heritage remained all the same. He didn’t know what to do when he was discharged; the United States Marine Corps had not taught him much besides how to kill (and how to color in-between the lines with crayons). He (or rather, his algorithm) brought him into contact with the Federal Communications Commission and its AmericaTV, which needed muscle for a new infrastructure project in northwestern Mexico.

As part of some political horsetrading and deal-making between Washington and Mexico City, AmericaTV had been given the contract to develop fiber optic infrastructure in cartel-plagued Sinaloa state, the contract later enlarged to include Sonora state, giving AmericaTV a direct link from the southern border. Given the, er, difficulties that could be encountered in these states, Mexico allowed the security wing of the FCC, Anti-Piracy Enforcement, to deploy a task force to protect the construction project and subsequent maintenance of it.

APE worked hard to bring peace, justice, and freedom to their new empire - or at least the little bit that they could patrol around the fiber optics channels and other telecommunications infrastructure. They pushed their prerogative when possible, sweeping into villages, searching for illegal streamers in the name of combating misinformation and electoral safety - an odd bit of terror was gripping the United States at the moment, a Third Red Scare except this wasn't red, but a fascism of the Russian variety, arriving in the United States via subliminal messaging on your browser of choice, and fascism and its sources must be stamped out. Netflix was currently fighting a losing battle and there were rumors of impending nationalization. Rumors on /a/ said APE would be looking into anime as a medium soon enough; Kamome Jima had alleged connections to Russia, with its star seiyuu, Tsukaba Tsukasa, going out of her way to learn the hand-to-hand combat skills of her character in My Government Death Squad Couldn't Possibly Be Cute to better voice her, apparently learning these skills from a former Spetsnaz operative on the studio's private compound on the titular Seagull Island off the coast of Japan, increasingly populated by pre-teen girls with a prodigious knowledge of the systema martial art favored by Russian special forces...

Of course, APE was in Mexico and all, but a fascist country next door couldn't be tolerated. The big guns had been brought in - the heavily-armed, militarized combat branch of APE, known simply as Anti-Piracy Enforcement Combat Branch. Their gear and big weapons led to them being known as Kongs, either of the King or Donkey variety. Several divisions of Kongs, dressed in black armor and packing artillery and offensive drone units, had been moving into Mexico over the past couple weeks at what one might say was an alarming rate...

The mountain air could grow quite cold, especially past midnight, and Humducker wished for something to drink. Down below, along the plain, the construction crews for the fiber optics lines had long finished for the day, and were now in the bars and inns of the seaside towns, hoping to impress the senioritas and mamacitas with their high-school knowledge of Spanish. They worked hard and played hard; there had been a few isolated incidents between the cartel and AmericaTV since the project had begun, mainly when some enterprising individual decided to become a “plug” as the kids say for the construction units, receiving bags full of powder or some sort of plant product from a shady, occasionally sombrero-adorned figure in a dusty saloon while tumbleweeds rolled around outside, with a promise to pay back once the pack had been sold; if the pack does not sell well, then that individual may find himself liable to bodily harm, or owing the cartel a favor, often involving the theft of parts and materials; other cartel means of entry into the construction project were bribery or blackmail. AmericaTV wouldn’t take this lying down, and APE agents justified their sweeps of villages, not just to root out Russian fascism, but to root out cartel influence as well (though according to AmericaTV, they were increasingly one and the same...come to think of it, don't those cartel fellows watch a lot of that Dragon Ball? Is anime a tool for the expansion of Russian fascism and criminal activity? Much to ponder...), interrogating the populace, making arrests of their own accord (extraterritoriality given to Americans operating in the fiber optics corridor as part of the contract). Neither side liked each other, and neither side was willing to budge.

Around 0200, Humducker retrieved a control-board, which happened to look suspiciously like an Xbox controller, from his pack. Next to him, in a mountain clearing, stood a Peregrine one-way attack drone, reverse-engineered by the FCC from captured Iranian Shahed drones downed near AmericaTV telecommunications facilities in Iraq. Humducker inhaled, wondering how he went from just some punk kid out of Grand Rapids to the Mexican mountains, but he knew all the same - destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it, the only thing that mattered was moving down the track laid out for him, because life had brought him to this point, and would bring him to wherever he needed to be. This fatalism had won him much approval during the Cuba campaign, and perhaps explained his quick promotions up the chain.

With a light push of the joystick, the Peregrine took off gently, soaring out of the clearing, gliding across the moonlight sky, looking serene against the constellations. He wore the body armor and balaclava of a cartel soldier; to any AmericaTV satellite watching, he would look just like one.

Thumb on the joystick, he circled the Peregrine around the nearest construction site for a bit, knowing that the rest of Kong would be readying themselves - 2nd Division out of its camp near Hermosillo, 3rd Division (mot.) coming up the highway to Culiacan, APE agents trailing behind with a list of suspected cartel and other opponents to arrest. American drones were already in the air, ostensibly to protect Sid & Syd’s show.

The Peregrine soared to the sky, looking ethereal, dainty, then Humducker lobbed the joystick downward, sending it into a dive. In what felt like eternity but only took a moment, the drone struck a construction site, a fireball temporarily alighting down on the plains, shaking the trees and shrubs, whistling up the mountain and beyond.

A few seconds later, over the radio, an APE agent reported that a cartel drone had just struck the fiber optics corridor, and only a few more seconds later, Kong artillery opened up on various cartel depots dotting northwestern Mexico…

BRILLIANT

BATTLE

FIRST CORINTHIANS

The war in Mexico gave Dick hope - the measles outbreak had died down, meaning online academy would soon come to an end, but the war had provided teacher’s unions nationwide ammunition to push for an indefinite continuation of online learning. In bordering states like California and Arizona, this perhaps made sense, especially after the cartel responded with a variety of shootings of school and workplace and community center variety, or in New York, where said shootings caused overactive NYPD imaginations to run wild while patrolling Jackson Heights in Queens, leading to some rather unfortunate maimings that produced nationwide protests that soon produced nationwide riots. Senator-Governor Ryan Hadden, with an eye on the White House, decided that the law and order vote was more important than the teacher’s union vote, and ordered in-person classes to resume under the protection of indefinite martial law. In the name of safety, all New Jersey municipal elections would be pushed back a year - with APE having arrested many local leaders, Hadden's appointees would have their acting terms extended. Hadden's forceful actions and admittedly handsome appearance sent his national appeal skyrocketing, the man of law and order. There were rumors that President Recktall would be offering Hadden, in exchange for not running against him in a bruising presidential primary, State or the FCC Chairmanship or both; given that the current Chairman was dealing with an invasion of Mexico he actually had no idea was coming, the idea had credence.

And an invasion it was. 3rd Division (mot.) stormed into Culiacan, surrounding it before the officials inside had even heard the news that something was amiss (Sid & Syd kissed the crowd good-night just as Kong arrived, and were reportedly in good spirits back at the studio in San Ygnacio, Los Angeles County the next morning). Police outposts and other government buildings in Sonora and Sinaloa often fell without a fight due to the rapidity of the invasion and opportunity for advancement among these low-level staffers and foot soldiers in the new Provisional Government of Northern Mexico, which APE declared to be an autonomous region of Mexico that would be returned to direct rule by the Mexican government once the cartel had been defeated (many Mexican police and army units did fight to protect their homeland, though that may just be disinformation...)

And the cartel was certainly being bombed back to the Stone Age, with depots, warehouses, and security outposts coming under near-continuous artillery, rocket, and drone attacks, along with oceanic and seaside ships, drug production plants and distribution centers. For cartel soldiers that blended into the civilian populace, AmericaTV revived earlier plans for similar situations - the concentration camps of the Filipino-American War and the Strategic Hamlet Program of the Vietnam War, which were also kind of like concentration camps. With a 50% historical success rate, AmericaTV decided to roll the dice once more.

This was all, of course, over the protests of the Mexican government. President Recktall, undoubtedly hopped up on methylphenidate, sought to soothe the American public and Mexican government with a televised speech concluding with, “I have a great appreciation for Mexico. Taco Tuesdays are a mainstay in the White House. And I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.”

The violence did not stop, mainly because on the ground, Kong and APE were knee-deep in blasting the hell out of the cartel and offered the Provisional Government to America as a fait accompli (though heads will roll, mainly of the current FCC Chairman, and rumor has it that Hadden won’t be running in the presidential primary after all); because from above, President Recktall’s eyes turned into cartoon-style dollar signs when the Secretary of the Treasury told him just how much copper was located in the occupied areas; and from below, where the homeless population of America’s cities were accused of being a cartel fifth column for buying fentanyl and adjacent products, leading to mass arrests that meant you could now walk through the Tenderloin without anyone openly masturbating to you.

In any case, Dick Slaughter made his reluctant return to G. Gordon Liddy Middle School. He had hoped he could reinvent himself after their long period in online academy, but joining groups of his peers turned out to be tougher than expected.

“Eh? What are you guys talking about?”

The group talk died down when Dick tried to enter. Chaddis Thundercock sneered at Dick.

“You wouldn’t get it, Dick Loser. We’re talking about all the shows we watched during the lockdown. But you couldn’t watch any shows, could you? We all know your family’s too poor for streaming.”

“Not true!” Dick lied. “I watched lots of anime!”

Brad Montgomery snorted. “We all know what kind of anime you like, Dick Loser. Chads like us watch Avatar. Virgins like you watch tentacle porn.”

“Also not true. Avatar isn’t an anime, genius!”

That earned him a round of laughter, Brad the loudest. “The anime loser doesn’t even know that Avatar is an anime!”

“Speaking of knowing something well,” said Chad. “Is your mother free Friday night, Dick Loser? Rumor has it that she likes to work the street corner at Redbox. How much do I gotta pay her for a movie, bro?”

“I heard she’s cheap, Chad, real cheap.”

Dick balled his hands into fists. “Don’t talk about my mother that way!”

In his rage, Dick went after Chad, but unfortunately he hooked Dick’s neck and started giving him a noogie. Just when Dick freed himself, Chad pulled down his pants, revealing his limited edition Evangelion tightie-whities.

Everyone started to point and laugh, and Dick could only pull his pants up indignantly.

When Dick came home, he gruffly said hello to his parents, then marched up to his room. Even anime didn’t seem appealing. In fact, the sight of all his memorabilia almost enraged him. Why couldn’t he have been born normal? Why did he have to like anime? Why did he have to be a Jets fan? He almost smacked away his custom-made Sam Darnold bobblehead, the one from a limited edition fan-night that featured the lost golden child of New York in ODM gear, but right before Dick’s hand made contact, he paused.

“That’s not right,” he said, lowering his hand. “Hating myself isn’t my nindo, my ninja way. I should be proud of who I am.”

He kissed Darnold on the cheek, then went to get a classic midnight glass of warm milk. But at the top of the staircase, he paused.

He poked his head down the stairs and saw his mother in the kitchen. Now, she was his stepmother, but she had encouraged Dick to pursue his hobbies and dreams, and Dick loved her for it. She also made some mean curry.

Dick’s parents sat at the kitchen table, his mother holding her head in her hands. Low sobs wracked her body.

“I’m a terrible mother,” she lamented. “Dicky came home today so sad and upset. I know it’s because he can’t fit in with his classmates. He has nothing to talk about with them! Not only did he have to inherit our sports fandoms, but we’re too poor for any streaming services. Dicky can’t keep up with shows like his classmates can.”

“It’s okay, honey,” his dad tried to reassure her. “I can get a second job.”

“You’re barely holding onto your first one. They’re starting to automate all the office jobs.”

“It’ll be okay,” his dad repeated, though he offered no reasoning for it.

“We’re supposed to give our kids a better world, but when I was a kid, we had cable. And now we can’t even afford that. Not just Dicky, but Mulva too, they have to wake up every morning to this crazy, messed-up world…and none of our teams will ever win a championship.”

The kitchen table went quiet. Dick exhaled slowly, then crept back to his room, wondering about it all. The last he heard from the kitchen before closing his door was-

“We’ll be fine, dear. The Mets are only seven games out of the wild card, after all.”