Remnant: Judge Victoria Davis

Victoria Davis had been a darling of the Progressives. She belonged to all of the right organizations. She participated. She was young and photogenic and very well-spoken. Her parents were College Professors and she had grown up in an uber-liberal suburb attached the University. Not only that, but her father was of Scot-Tamil extraction and her mother was Puerto Rican.

Supreme Court judges in Michigan are nominally nonpartisan be each election cycle the Progressives throw their muscle behind two candidates and the Conservatives back two other candidates.

Victoria knocked off a weak Conservative candidate to become Michigan’s first Sri Lankan/Puerto Rican State Supreme Court Justice at the age of 35. The Progressives were over-joyed because they assumed she was a “lifer”.

Their joy soured as she ruled against the Progressive “agenda”. She refused to “write law” from the bench. After being called-to-task by the leading Progressives in the state (perhaps not their wisest move), Victoria informed them that changing law from the bench was akin to rearranging the furniture in Hellen Keller’s living room. It might make perfect sense to the people moving the furniture but it was not a service to Ms Keller.

If Progressives wanted laws changed or tweaked, they needed to do it through the legislative process so ALL people impacted by the change had a chance to weigh in. The fact that the legislative process is not as “responsive” as writing law from the bench was a feature, not a bug. Just ask Ms Keller.

Judge Davis cared about people, not causes.

Meghan agonized over sharing her father’s recording of the conversation with Boo Steezey and Ben Chode. In the end, she did share it.

Justice Davis was conditioned to absorb mountains of information. It was the curse of technology. Since it was the source of the curse, she had no qualms about using it to make life easier. She had software that compressed video and audio without distorting the sound quality. The two minute video played in thirty seconds.

Justice Davis shot Meghan a quick email. “Looks like your dad is handling it. Keep me informed.”

*

Jarrell and Jim made good time. West on M-50 to I-69, then I-69 to Indy.

Just short of Indy, they stopped to get fuel and chatted it up with the middle-Eastern gentleman behind the counter. He advised that they avoid Indy if they could. Gangs had been shutting down the freeway, beating the occupants of vehicles and stealing everything.

That put the men onto secondary roads. And it seemed prudent to stay on them if they were going to get off the freeway at every major city.

They topped off the tank every time it dropped to ¾. They still made good time. The twelve-hour trip took fifteen-hours. They sacked-out in the cab of the truck at the address where the generator head was stored. It took about ten minutes to load and then they were on their way back, 36 hours from Danny’s place to KC and back.

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Stephanie Stewart uploaded the video footage of the device she and Ted had used to deploy the jellyfish that hammered the Pennsylvania power plants. She included parts lists, dimensions...everything domestic terrorists would need to replicate the device.

Stephanie uploaded it to a private hosting service and to several of the mainstream video hosting sites.

*

The pressure in the natural gas lines continued to drop.

In several major cities, the pressure dropped below what is required to keep pilot flames lit. While few furnaces still relied on the ancient technology SOME of them did.

The utility companies followed their emergency plan books and turned off the distribution to those branches. Predictably, residents immediately started plugging in their space heaters and the electrical grid staggered under the load and the rolling blackouts went to plain-old-blackout.

The tensions that had been building because of the pandemic and shattered economy erupted into flames and outright street-to-street fighting between competing gangs.