Ode To Defiance Chapter 26

Author's Notes

Well, that was a long journey through a terrifying episode. You made it! Thank you for sharing it with me.

As always, thank you to my incredible beta and JIT teams, my wonderful editor (I have to say that, she’s my wife, but I would anyway), Jake Caleb for creating an amazing new cover at the last minute, and Steve Campbell and his production team for always being on the ball.

But most of all, thanks to you, the readers, for being willing to step into my universe and take the journey with me. If you enjoyed

Ode to Defiance

, you will find links to the other BrainTrust Universe books at the end of this section.

About the story:

As Gina observes, “Let’s face it: we’ll do this because someone must, and only we can.” I did not realize when I started this book that it was all about stepping up and transcending your limitations. I was sometimes as surprised as anyone when some of the characters did so. In the real world, I have personally had the privilege, just a couple of times, of witnessing when someone stepped up in this fashion, so for me at least, it all was quite credible.

It’s been a while since I’ve reported on which parts of these stories are based on fact. The science, of course, is largely correct, except for errors committed by the author despite the efforts of his diverse community of experts to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Hukou, the Red Princelings, the web addiction rehab centers, and the social credit metric are very real parts of Chinese society. When I first wrote about it, the Chinese President had not yet declared himself President for Life, though of course now that part of the story has come true. The transformation of all powerful posts in the Chinese hierarchy into hereditary positions has not yet come to pass. Give them time.

The story of Qi Ru, the Hukou peasant who left the impoverished west to go to college at a Chinese university, got rejected, and went overseas to get a degree from a prestigious university, is true. Whether the real person went into high finance, I do not know.

The abusive power of civil forfeiture is not quite as real today as it was when I wrote

Crescendo of Fire

. The attorney general who vigorously encouraged this abusive practice is gone, and the Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, has imposed limits on its exercise. Of course, in the world of the

BrainTrust

, there are nineteen justices on the Supreme Court, ten of them selected for their slavish devotion to the whim of the President for Life. Clearly, in that world, civil forfeiture made a comeback.

The story of the Texas town of Roma on the border with Mexico is approximately true. As I write this, they are being “negotiated” by the Feds into deciding which homes to tear down for The Wall. I did include a couple of minor embellishments. I do not know for sure that the people to the south make excellent fish tacos, and I do not know that the people to the north like beer. However, based on my personal experiences in Texas and Mexico, that’s the way to bet.

The character Diab is derived from another real person. The real person, born in Palestine, wound his way through the Mideast, went to college in Cairo, and in that more gentle and welcoming time, wrangled his way into America to become a much-sought-after engineer. He kept trying to retire, but no one would let him. He married another immigrant/refugee, a German who had survived the firebombing of Dresden. One of their children is a financier; the other, Jameela, is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force. I like to think that, had he been born a few generations later in the much more hostile world of the BrainTrust, he would have built the

First Chance

. He was certainly qualified.

The story of the mother and child who poop on the deck of the

Mt. Parnassus

is derived from a true story told by a retired Peace Corps worker.

The Israeli variant of the F35 that had a second cockpit where Dash could sit was on the drawing boards at the time of writing. It looks like that plan has been quashed, so it is true no longer. This is one of the risks in writing near-future science fiction. I don’t regret using it for a moment, however. It makes a great part of the story, although perhaps I should have called it the F36 :-)

—Marc Stiegler, April 11, 2019