Failed State: A Novel

By Christopher Brown

A Philip K. Dick Award Nominee

"The novel is as tense and thrilling as any of Brown's work, and as full of rage and hope. It's a novel that truly reckons with the enormity of  both our climate emergency and the system that produced it - a tale of  human imperfection and redemption." -- Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Walkaway

In this second dystopian legal thriller from the author of the acclaimed Rule of Capture and Tropic of Kansas, lawyer Donny Kimoe juggles two intertwined cases whose outcomes will determine the course of America’s future—and his own.

In the aftermath of a second American revolution, peace rests on a fragile truce. The old regime has been deposed, but the ex-president has vanished, escaping justice for his crimes. Some believe he is dead. Others fear he is in hiding, gathering forces. As the factions in Washington work to restore order, Donny Kimoe is in court to settle old scores—and pay his own debts come due.

Meanwhile, the rebels Donny once defended are exacting their own kind of justice. In the ruins of New Orleans, they are building a green utopia—and kidnapping their defeated adversaries to pay for it. The newest hostage is the young heiress to a fortune made from plundering the country—and the daughter of one of Donny’s oldest friends. In a desperate gambit to save his own skin, Donny switches sides to defend her before the show trial. If he fails, so will the truce, dragging the country back into violence. But by taking the case, he risks his last chance to expose the atrocities of the dictatorship—and being tried for his own crimes against the revolution.

To save the future, Donny has to gamble his own. The only way out is to find the evidence that will get both sides back to the table, and secure a more lasting peace. To do that, Donny must betray his clients’ secrets. Including one explosive secret hidden in the ruins, the discovery of which could extinguish the last hope for a better tomorrow—or, if Donny plays it right, keep it burning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062859129

Christopher Brown

Christopher Brown’s debut novel Tropic of Kansas was a finalist for the Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of 2018, and he was a World Fantasy Award nominee for the anthology Three Messages and a Warning. His short fiction and criticism has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including MIT Technology Review, LitHub, Tor.com and The Baffler. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices law.

Book preview

title page

Dedication

For Octavia and Ajin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Part One: Things Fall Apart

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Seven Years Earlier

20

Part Two: The Borders of Utopia

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Part Three: We the Creatures

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

Acknowledgments

Tropic of Kansas

Excerpt from Tropic of Kansas

About the Author

Praise for Rule of Capture

Also by Christopher Brown

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part One

Things Fall Apart

1

The failure of the American legal system turned out to be good for the lawyers. It was not so good for the clients, but in those first few years after the uprising, everybody had to adapt.

For Donny Kimoe, the hardest thing about adapting was that he had to spend a lot of time in Dallas. That he had grown up there only made it worse. But it was where what passed for justice in those days could be found, far enough from the disappearing coast that they only had to close the courthouses during tornado season. As a bonus, Dallas still had real food, if you could afford it. And the air conditioning still worked, which was more than you could say for most cities in those days, when the infrastructure that hadn’t been destroyed in the fighting or died of old age and inattention was often out of juice, or saved for when it was really needed. Half the people Donny knew back home in Houston, and all the ones with money, had bailed for Big D over the past decade, the same way they had vacated New Orleans as it drowned. And so Dallas was still rich, or at least good at making you think so, by keeping things as shiny as it could with available materials. As shiny as the waxed BMWs and Benzes you could still find proud corporate execs driving down the increasingly empty freeways, usually with armed chauffeurs who were also the ones they paid to wait in the gas lines.

Those execs were the ones Donny came to hunt. Them, and their investors, assets, and insurance policies, and whatever else they had managed to hold on to through the years of dictatorship, blight, and civil strife that burned up the hard-earned savings of most. Donny did not have a BMW, a Benz, or even a Chevy. He did have a locked file drawer crammed full of jewelry and expensive watches he had accepted as payment in lieu of fees from the political dissidents he had represented during the long emergency. The contents of that drawer could be enough to retire on, if the economy ever recovered enough for people to afford such luxuries again. Or to really care what time it was, in an America where the idea of the future was a form of nostalgia rarely discussed outside of corner bars and neighborhood marijuana dispensaries. And where most people, including Donny, were focused on settling the scores of the past.

The judges still cared what time it was, but there were not enough Rolexes in the world to correct Donny Kimoe’s knack for showing up late. Even when his own future was on the line.

As he stepped through the courtroom doors that Friday morning at 9:27 a.m., Donny found the Honorable Laura O. Larriva already seated at her bench, and every other player at their place. When she saw Donny, the judge broke away from her off-the-record sidebar with defense counsel, and then pulled back the sleeve of her black robe to look at her own Rolex, a gesture whose real purpose was as clear as the big government clock on the wall.

You know being a lawyer isn’t like being a musician, Mr. Kimoe, said the judge, addressing him with the formality the courtroom and its transcript required, even though they had known each other on a collegial if not chummy first-name basis for more than a decade. Keeping them waiting does not make them want to hear from you more.

I should have had the good sense to scalp my tickets while there was still demand, said Karen Keller, the lead lawyer for the private prison company Donny was suing, who was sitting at the opposite table with her pinstriped entourage from Polson & Chevalier. Donny felt a tremor of anxiety wondering what Karen and the judge, who knew each other even better, had been talking about off the record while they waited for him.

The judge laughed. And now you have me trying to remember if I have ever heard Donny Kimoe sing.

I did once, said Karen. Three years ago, when they had the bad idea to host karaoke night at the state bar convention.

The self-disgust that came on as the scene cued up in Donny’s head was driven not so much by the cringeworthy memory of his wasted performance as the reminder that he spent so much time fraternizing with the enemy during his years fighting the regime.

What did he sing? said the judge.

‘Ebb Tide,’ if you must know, said Donny, embracing the fool. That was the role the system liked him to play—sometimes to his advantage. A prescient and underappreciated evocation of amorous melancholy in a drowning world.

That was just the warm-up, said Karen. Before he got all punk rock. And then degenerated into political rants like some mic-hogging Oscar winner. Best performance as a burned-out lawyer who can’t win a case and blames the system.

Judge Larriva and Karen both chuckled. They had probably been joking about him before he got there. They had worked together at P&C before the judge went on the bench, and now Karen and her partners were the judge’s most reliable campaign contributors. The only good thing about that setup was you knew the only bribes Judge Larriva took were legal ones.

Donny shrugged. There may be a few videos still out there in circulation if you really want to see it, Your Honor. And I’m pretty sure there’s one from the same night, of Ms. Keller and Bridget Kelly channeling the Red River Girls, big-hair wigs and all.

Karen smiled, and the judge joined her. And Donny realized he was doing it again.

But the only thing either of us should be embarrassed about, he added, is that we were partying while Ms. Keller’s client was busy killing people for their politics.

Save it for the press conference, Mr. Kimoe, said the judge. Because you have a long way to go to make that case, and there are no cameras in here. Now, let’s get on the record and see if we can make up some of the time you wasted. I have a full docket of people with real problems lined up behind you.

She gaveled them in with a barely audible tap, and her staff attorney, court reporter, and bailiff kicked into gear with the energy of a middle-aged cover band ready to play the same old song one more time.

This was the kind of hearing the clients don’t show up for. And it was the kind of case the clients might even forget, as the years rolled by with depositions and document requests and discovery fights but no real progress. Donny had been a different kind of defense lawyer, the kind who tries to keep guilty people alive and out of jail, so he could appreciate Karen’s gifts for delay and jurisprudential misdirection. But looking over at her and her squad, he was reminded that while P&C was billing enough every month to pay the full salary of one of those associates, Donny would only get paid if and when he won. In the meantime, every hour he put into working on this case, and every buck he spent on travel and discovery, was a sunk cost. That each of the junior lawyers sitting there with Karen made more money in one year than Donny made in the last three added to the rub, even before you remembered that one of them commanded that salary in part because she had clerked for Judge Larriva. But Donny had finally compelled them to produce the witness who, if Donny’s information was good, could break the case open. If the morning went well, he might even get Karen to talk about writing a check that would keep the real story wrapped up in a confidential settlement agreement. Donny would get a third of that check, and it would be just enough to make up for the guilt he would feel at failing to get the true story out there. It would have to be, because this was the only real case Donny had worked on for the past year. He had debts to pay, real ones and karmic ones, and he had put all his chips on this hand.

The witness was sitting right there in the first row behind the defense table, a twitch in his eye as he inadvertently caught Donny’s gaze. Behind him was the lone reporter who had shown up for the show, if you could call her that—a blogger who had been covering the case from the beginning. The only other people in the gallery were two unfamiliar faces in the back row, a man and a woman who could have passed for feds but for the architect glasses the guy wore. Maybe they were real journalists. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. The time when Donny could command mainstream press attention for his cases had passed with the prior regime, and his last big criminal case had made him a different kind of news.

The fasces embossed on the wall behind them was a good reminder of whom the 299th District Court really served, even if it was the minor leagues, and an unlikely place to seek justice for war crimes. It was a state civil court, normally the venue for small-time business disputes, divorces, and personal-injury cases. And it looked the part—a small, drab courtroom, the kind of setup that county bureaucrats had deemed nice enough back in the days when most of the budget went to locking up unruly refugee kids from more climate-ravaged states, locals who violated the emergency restrictions on public assembly, and the people from both groups that managed to get classified as domestic insurgents. Maybe it was Donny’s memories of handling those cases that made the courtroom seem so claustrophobic as he pulled out his files and took his place at the plaintiff’s table.

Donny looked back up at Judge Larriva, who was watching him attempt to get organized while the clock ticked.

We’re ready, he said, even though the we was just him, and the main evidence of his preparation was a dog-eared yellow pad on which he had overwritten layers of notes in three different colors, most of the pages embellished with bold geometric doodles.

All right, said the judge. "We are back for another installment in Harrison v. AMR, case number 12–247893. And hopefully getting close to the finish line. Trial is set for one month from today. I have Mr. Kimoe’s amended complaint—this is the fifth amended complaint, I believe—"

That’s correct, Your Honor, said Donny. We uncovered new facts that required us to add additional claims.

Some rather incendiary claims, if I may say so, said the judge. You’ve gone from saying people died under the defendant’s care due to negligence to saying they were murdered.

That has always been our belief, Your Honor, said Donny. That the resettlement farms were used as cover for a secret program to disappear opponents of the regime. But we had not wanted to state our claim in those terms until we had the evidence to back it up.

Well, it’s the only claim you have left, said the judge. Last time you were here, I ruled your negligence claims were precluded by AMR’s contract with the government. And today I have déjà vu. Not just because you are late again but also because we have essentially the same issue—that your wrongful-death claims are exempt from suit under last year’s general immunity included as part of the cease-fire. A finding Ms. Keller wishes me to make today and grant her client summary judgment.

That’s correct, Your Honor, said Karen. We dispute all of the allegations in the complaint, which read like they were copied from one of the conspiracy sites. Accidents did happen on the farms AMR helped operate, and some people died. No real evidence has been provided that any camp residents were deliberately killed for their insurrection. But even if they were, such claims are barred by the Interstate Compact for the Cessation of Hostilities, which provided amnesty to combatants on both sides of our recent troubles. We all lost blood and treasure in the conflict. Many of us lost loved ones. And we all agreed to move on in the interests of peace. Mr. Kimoe does not get to make exceptions just because he filed this case before the Compact was signed.

As you have copiously briefed, said the judge. And Mr. Kimoe has less copiously, but quite colorfully, rebutted in his response. So at the outset let me tell you all that I am inclined to agree with Ms. Keller on the amnesty question. If employees of her client, acting as representatives of the former government, killed insurgents who had taken up arms against that government, whether in the urban battlefield or in the seeming sanctuary of a resettlement farm, that conduct is exempt from suit just as those same insurgents have immunity for their attacks on federal personnel and contractors. But I have also noted the defense’s resistance to providing Mr. Kimoe access to its personnel for depositions.

Your Honor, said Karen, most of the personnel Mr. Kimoe sought testimony from are no longer in the company’s employ, and it is not our responsibility to locate them. But we have the latest witness Mr. Kimoe requested with us ready to testify today.

Which witness you made us subpoena, said Judge Larriva. And who Mr. Kimoe claims will persuade me that the immunity does not apply.

You have that right, Judge, said Donny. And I believe he will also help show there is a more active concealment of evidence going on with respect to the other witnesses we’ve identified. Especially the guards.

I’m all ears, said the judge. So you can take what’s left of this hour to convince me I shouldn’t dismiss this case and stop wasting the court’s valuable time.

Six years of work, riding on minutes you could watch roll by on the clock.

You will want to hear more than that, Judge.

I don’t have time to hear more than that, Mr. Kimoe. So let’s get after it.

Your Honor, said Karen. Before we get to that, can we discuss our Rule 123 motion?

Donny did not recall any such motion. He could not even remember what Rule 123 was.

The one you filed at ten p.m. last night? said the judge.

Donny pulled his laptop out.

Yes, Your Honor, said Karen. For which we are sorry to have burdened the court, but it’s a procedural matter that only ripened over the weekend, and your consideration of which could save us all some time.

The judge was looking at her benchtop screen.

Donny was trying to find a network connection with one hand while the other pulled his beat-up copy of the rules from his bag.

Let’s discuss this after plaintiff’s counsel presents his witness, said the judge. Are we ready, Mr. Kimoe?

Donny looked back up at the judge, and stood.

Yes, Your Honor.

As she called the witness to the stand, he looked back down at the page he had flipped to.

Rule 123.

Suggestion of Death.

He didn’t have time to read the rest of the rule, or to guess why Karen was invoking it. All he knew was the only viable strategy he had was to try to turn the shifty-looking middle manager standing there in the box into a ventriloquist’s dummy. One that made more than a suggestion of death.

The witness did not look hostile, though that was what Donny had been allowed to designate him. One of those all-American white guys who looks to have been raised in a cubicle on a diet of soda pop and paternal admonitions. Forty-three, according to the personnel file, but somehow resembling an oversized kid despite the suit—maybe because of the way the suit looked too big and too small at the same time, punctuated with a red tie that brought out the blood in his pink face.

Good afternoon, Mr. Bagley. I’m Donald Kimoe, the lawyer for Daryl Harrison, the lead plaintiff in this case. Thank you for coming today.

You made me, said Bagley.

We only sent the subpoena after your employer made us. But I’m sure you don’t share their desire to cover up the truth, and I appreciate you being here to testify. Could you please state your name for the record?

Richard Bagley.

Who is your current employer, Mr. Bagley?

PDL.

An acronym for Prairie Dog Logistics, am I right?

That used to be the name, said Bagley.

Maybe before the animal in question became extinct, said Donny.

I wouldn’t know.

I hear you. It’s hard to keep up with the species count, even when they run it in the Sunday paper. PDL is a private transportation company, correct?

Transportation and logistics, yes.

But not like Greyhound. I can’t just go buy a ticket for a ride to Houston or Chicago.

That’s right. We move cargo for governments and businesses.

Some of it human cargo.

Correct.

Who is your biggest customer?

That would be our parent company, AMR—the American Management and Retraining Company.

Such a big customer that they bought you so they could get a better deal.

I guess so. They bought us three years ago, after PDL had become one of their main suppliers.

And their biggest customer is the federal government?

Was, said Bagley. Now I’m not sure who the biggest customer is.

Business is off, I take it.

Their business is.

And what business is that?

They operate detention, resettlement, and skills-training facilities for governments and other companies. Or did. Most of the federal contracts got canceled after the takeover.

By the takeover, you mean the popular revolt that restored the Constitution?

No, I mean the foreign-backed revolt that shredded the Constitution.

Compliance with international law hasn’t been bad for your business, has it?

No. The bus business and cargo volumes have really taken off since the air-travel bans.

How long have you been working for PDL?

Nine years, since before the buyout.

That’s a long run. What is your current position?

I’m the VP of operations for District Four.

What territory does District Four cover?

Most of the Central US—the Dakotas and Minnesota south to here in Texas, and as far east as Mississippi.

So your region covers most of the resettlement farms and crop labs.

Pretty much.

Where are you based?

Oklahoma City.

‘The Crossroads of America.’ Good hub for a bus company.

It works well for us.

How long have you been the VP of operations?

Around two years.

Since the cease-fire?

Pretty much.

And before that you managed the operation at Fort Hood down in Killeen, correct?

I was one of the managers.

Is PDL paying you to be here today?

I guess. I’m on a salary, and this ain’t vacation.

No, it’s not. You sent some folks on vacation, though, didn’t you? Permanent vacation.

Objection, Your Honor, said Keller. She didn’t need to explain the basis.

Mr. Kimoe, said the judge.

Sorry, said Donny. That’s not what they called it. But we’ll get to that in a bit. At Fort Hood, you were assigned to help support the AMR account, before AMR bought PDL, correct?

They were our main customer. But we were all really working for Tripto Labs, who hired AMR. And for the federal government, who gave Tripto Labs the contract to grow their New Corn on a production scale.

So this was after Fort Hood was designated as a resettlement farm, where Tripto Labs planted their next-gen GMO crop and the prisoners provided the labor.

They were not prisoners, said Bagley. Maybe some of them. Most were just refugees. Refugees from other states.

From the ‘Tropic of Kansas.’ States where the old corn wouldn’t grow anymore.

Not like it used to. Some were resettled because of blight, or drought. Others because of the fighting up there.

Did they come voluntarily?

I don’t know, said Bagley. My understanding was they got compensation. Food and shelter, some money. And the chance to help develop the crops that could restore the places they came from and fix our food crisis.

By working the fields of a genetically engineered grain that can grow in spent fields, suck a third more carbon from the air, and get twice as big as regular corn—just as long as you have a small army of workers to pollinate it by hand.

Look, I just handled the transportation to and from, said Bagley.

Fair enough, Mr. Bagley, said Donny. May I ask how many buses you dispatched, during your three and a half years supporting the AMR account at Fort Hood?

How many buses?

Yes. How many buses.

I don’t know. Usually about one a day.

Every day?

Most days. When things got really busy, there might be two or three. And they weren’t always buses.

What do you mean, they weren’t always buses?

We ran out sometimes. So to fulfill our contract we had to find alternate transportation. Trucks.

What kind of trucks?

Tractor trailers, mainly.

Air-conditioned?

Just ventilated, usually. Livestock trailers. We were using all the grain trailers to move product.

You used livestock trailers to ship people off to resettlement farms.

Only when we had to. And when we did, we cleaned them up real good. Put a port-a-potty in there, plenty of water. Still better than the conditions where most of these people were coming from.

Cattle cars, but business class, said Donny. So these trucks, and buses, they were used to transport internal refugees to work at the farms.

Yep.

And also people who were actual detainees?

They kept the insurgents in a separate section of the camp. More secure. Same with the transportation.

And who was in charge of moving these people around?

Federal emergency relief authorities. FEMA, Coast Guard, other branches of the Motherland Guard.

The same agencies in charge of the camp.

Correct, but not the farms where they worked.

Tripto Labs ran the farms. And oversaw the security AMR provided there.

Pretty much.

And you moved the people and material in and out of there.

That’s right.

Did you ever go into the camp?

Behind the wire? No. I didn’t have clearance. Closest I got was the transit depot across the highway, where we loaded and unloaded passengers.

What were they like?

Just like anybody, I guess. Skewed pretty young. Young guys, especially.

Those were the actual prisoners. Or detainees. Suspected insurgents.

Correct. Otherwise it was just like a cross section of folks from that part of the country. A lot of farm people.

Even old folks and young kids?

Yes, a cross section. That’s what I saw, at least.

Were they happy?

How would I know? They looked poor and hungry.

Did they cooperate? Did they start fights?

Sometimes people would mouth off. Maybe a young punk would try to pull something. If they did, the guards got them back in line real quick. Mostly people were cooperative.

Like livestock.

I wouldn’t know.

"You mentioned unloading and loading. Sometimes you sent people away. Were they going home?"

Not usually.

Where were they going?

Other facilities, usually, as they started more farms. Places like Bartlesville, Joplin, Sugarland, Irving, New Orleans. Sometimes they even got to go back home, with seed licenses, to help start new farms.

What was in New Orleans?

Camp Zulu, and the Superdome.

The Superdome was more like an actual prison.

Sort of. It was an emergency detention facility. And the people we sent there were the most dangerous insurgents.

So you were told.

Sometimes by the insurgents themselves, yeah. But mostly by the Camp Administrator’s Office.

So the camp administrator decided who qualified as an insurgent combatant?

I don’t know. Could have been they got their lists from the Guard.

Were you provided a list?

They just brought us the passengers, and names for the manifest.

And those passengers had to be sent on more secure buses. With bars on the windows, and bars you could tie their chains to.

Yes, we outfitted a prison transport bus for that.

So you would load it with prisoners—

The guards would load it.

So the guards would load it, and take them to New Orleans, to the Superdome, as far as you understood. And then the bus would come back in a day or two?

That’s right.

Did you get confirmation the passengers had been delivered to their destination?

Bagley shifted in his chair. No. Once they boarded, we had done our handoff to AMR and the manifest was closed.

But your drivers knew.

Those weren’t ‘our drivers.’ They were AMR personnel, with security clearances, working on contract for Motherland.

You knew most of them, though, right? You worked with them all the time. Many had been PDL employees before, and toward the end you shared a corporate parent.

I knew some of them.

Did you ever hear any of them talk about ‘dropping the kids off at the pool’?

Donny glanced at the judge. She was listening closely, eyes on the witness.

I can’t remember, said Bagley.

You don’t remember anyone talking about what happened to prisoners who left on those buses but never showed up at the Superdome?

I heard some stories about that, but only later. After the raids.

Were you there when the bus came back on the Friday before Memorial Day four years ago?

That was a long time ago.

Let me refresh your recollection. He handed copies of a document to the judge and Karen, which they had both seen before and the judge admitted without objection. Then he handed it to Bagley. This is your ops log from that month, correct?

Yes, said Bagley. He shifted in his chair again, like suddenly the weight of his extra flesh was heavier than it had been.

That’s your handwriting on there, making additional notes?

Looks like it.

Do you see the entry for May 22, on the second page? The one you highlighted in yellow?

Yes.

So if I’m reading this correctly, that bus was scheduled to depart for New Orleans at six-fifteen a.m., with Mr. Gannon as the driver and Ms. Lee and Mr. Peña as the guards.

That’s what this says, but I don’t remember which guards were on it.

"Is that because they