Living History

Ben Essex

“Eripuit Coelo fulmen, mox Sceptra Tyrannis.”

(“He seized the lightning from Heaven and the sceptre from Tyrants.”)

-Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, regarding Benjamin Franklin. March 1778.

“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

-Benjamin Franklin, 1817.

I’m flat on my back, and there’s a life flashing before my eyes.

Around me, windows rattle. The floor is shaking-the whole world’s falling to pieces. I’m on a broken train, and it’s kicking itself apart with stress and strain. It could go off the rails at any moment.

The stupid powder wig feels heavy on my head. My clothes are tight; britches and frills soggy with sweat. Behind me, the carriage doors are forced open and five men in body armour burst in. Their heads are helmeted, their eyes are unsympathetic and some of them are bleeding. They’ve just been through a battle.

The armoured men part, and someone else steps up. He’s not dressed like them, not at all. He has a great frilly beard and a tall top-hat. His clothes are immaculately tailored, coloured black. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a belly His face is stern and somewhat goat-like. One of his eyebrows seems permanently raised.

‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ says the man who looks exactly like Abraham Lincoln. ‘But honestly, how did you think this was going to end?’

The men advance, weapons lit with crackling blue fire. Some of them also have batons.

I tense.

So let’s review. I’m here, in the body of Benjamin Franklin, about to get my brains beaten out. I could ask myself why_? but I know the answer._

Because I had a deadline.

I close my eyes.

And at that moment, dinosaurs attack.

My real name is Jacob White. I used to have a real body. It was tall and gangly and plain looking, but it was mine.

I used to have a real job, too. I worked for the Applied Fundamentals Division of The Salmon Corporation.

What does an Applied Fundamentals Division do? I don’t really know-no one does. Applied Fundamentals is a warehouse department, a dumping ground for whatever projects the company can’t fit elsewhere. Getting to work in Applied is actually quite a big deal. It means the company considers you smart enough, flexible enough and above all unscrupulous enough to turn your hand to whatever their latest vague and seedy project might be.

The Salmon Corporation is not the most above-board company in the world. Actually, it’s run by the Mafia. I’m not sure precisely which Mafia, since they don’t exactly give out business cards. Wait, that’s a lie. They actually do give out business cards, but the cards don’t go into specifics.

The day my deadline came, I got a business card.

It was a Tuesday. 09:23 A.M. I was late for work.

This was in no way unusual for me. My lovely little box-apartment was located on the other side of the city, behind the metro-lines. Getting to the office every morning was a bit of a hike, especially to a man like me-that is to say, a lazy man.

Usually, my tardiness wasn’t a problem. I was high enough up in the department to be sure nobody was going to call me out… except for this particular Tuesday, when I got hauled into my manager’s office and glared at by beady eyes behind little wireframe glasses.

I had a lot of managers. I’d never seen this one before. He was a fat man with sausage fingers.

The Fat Man sat behind his desk. It was nice desk in, and it was in a nice room. There were potted plants.‘Yes sir,’ I nodded. I didn’t get promoted up to Applied without knowing how to work the system a little bit. Suck up to your superiors, bark at your inferiors. If necessary, grant sexual favours.

‘I hope you’re not having any kind of trouble at home, Mr. White?’

‘No sir,’ I shook my head. ‘Everything is A-OK, sir.’

‘Good,’ the Fat Man grunted. ‘Well, just in case, take my card. If anything is bothering you give me a call, it’ll be dealt with. We at The Salmon Corp care about our employees, you know.’

‘I know, sir.’ He gave me the business card. It was laminated, and bore the Fat Man’s name; Peter Greuze.

It’ll be dealt with. I didn’t want to ask for details, and I didn’t want to take up that offer- ever, under any circumstances. The Corp does take care of its employees. Sometimes it flattens entire neighbourhoods to make life easier for them.

‘Well,’ Greuze coughed. ‘Now that you are here, I want to give you your latest assignment in person. We have something rather special planned for Applied this year.’

‘Oh yes, sir? That’s exciting to hear.’ I wasn’t being flip. Special is exciting.

The Fat Man beamed. ‘Indeed it is. You see, we’ve decided to expand the Corp’s merchandising rights into hitherto unexplored areas. We want the rights to an American Presidents Action figure line.’

I nodded. Fair enough. Action figures seemed a little… small, though.

‘Your attendance could use some work, Mr. White,’ I was told.‘But we have certain concerns about image copyright. We want to make sure the Presidents’ images are all exclusively ours. For that, they’ll need to sign certain contracts.’

The Fat Man could see my blossoming disbelief. This was bigger, all right.

‘That’ll be your job, Mr. White. We want you to start resurrecting Presidents. All ninety three of them.’

Technically, there have been ninety-four Presidents. However, the ninety-fourth (President Huey Jackson II) was only in office for a grand total of forty-seven seconds before his office exploded, so people tend to ignore him. Since Jackson II, the institution has fallen sharply from grace. Nobody pays much attention to the Presidency anymore.

Greuze’s task was certainly something to dwell on.

Walking through a bad neighbourhood at a bad time of night, I lost myself in daydreams of Presidents past. I didn’t need to worry about being murdered or robbed or anything like that-the little salmon symbol on my jacket kept all the lowlifes at a distance.

On the horizon, there were fires. A police helicopter was tumbling through the sky, tracing a rapid path back down to earth. On its way, it clipped a shiny skyscraper; I had to wince. Even if the pilot survived that crash, he was going to be in trouble. The skyscrapers were supposed to stay shiny at all times-very rich people have paid some very big guns to keep them shiny at all times. In the city of America Little, you respect your janitors.

America Little doesn’t really live up to its name. It’s enormous; it spans two coasts and all the land in between. It’s not quite up to the scale of America Large below, but Large is mostly artificial oil fields.