Echo Chamber Read online

  Echo Chamber

  Ameritocracy, Book 3

  A.C. Fuller

  An Note to the Reader

  You'll enjoy Echo Chamber more if you've read Books 1-2 of the Ameritocracy series, Open Primary and Off Message.

  The trilogy is designed to be read in order.

  Echo Chamber

  (noun)

  An enclosed space for producing reverberation of sound.

  (idiom)

  An insular communication space where everyone holds the same opinion and reinforces their existing beliefs.

  Part 1

  1

  May 2020

  Bounced by the movement of the train, my head strikes the warm window, waking me from the terrifying dream of a Peter Colton presidency.

  I arch my back and raise my arms in a modified stretch to avoid hitting the person next to me, then stare blankly out the window at the brown hills in the distance.

  Twenty minutes from Sacramento, we pass through Braxton, California, home of the world's second-largest corn maze, a few palm trees, and not much else. Our second-to-last debate starts in three hours—an event we added to make up for the debate that was interrupted by a shooting.

  I should be working—there's always more work to do—but I'm nervous and looking for a distraction.

  I haven't seen Peter since he joined Ameritocracy. That's where the terrifying dream comes in. When we broke up, it was as though he flipped a switch from warm, charismatic Peter to emotionless, all-business Peter. I didn't know he had that switch, and the implications chilled me. Ever since, I've been haunted by the fact that my project might make him president.

  I don't like how I feel and I can't turn into a ball of anxiety right now. I open my email. There's always a distraction there.

  A few dozen new emails appear in my personal account—the one I only give to close friends and family. Scanning them slowly, I see that my mom is coming to the finale in Washington, D.C. and my ten-year college reunion is coming up.

  My eyes freeze on the next message, then close involuntarily, as though they know I'm not ready for it.

  My father has never written me an email.

  Never spoken to me.

  Our total correspondence amounts to three birthday cards and a public statement his staff issued when Ameritocracy exploded onto the scene last fall.

  Dear Mia,

  I hope you will forgive me for this cyber-intrusion. You don't owe me anything, but I wanted to make sure I could reach you in a private way. I don't want anything to get into the press unless you want it there. So I reached out to your mother for your personal email address. She was reluctant at first, but I believe she knows that my heart, at last, is in the right place.

  My greatest regret in life is how I handled your birth, and my relationship with your mother, who I cared for very deeply. I did not intend to fall in love with her, but I did. I have no one to blame but myself. I was married and, well, you know the story. And yet I want you to know that there was love there.

  I hear you will be in Washington, D.C. in early July. A little political event or something?

  Just kidding—and congratulations on the wonderful success of Ameritocracy. Your mother and I are so proud of you. With good reason, she still holds a lot of anger toward me, but our pride in you is one thing we share.

  I will be in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention the week before your final event in Washington, D.C. I would be honored if you'd allow me to buy you dinner.

  We've spent thirty-two years not knowing each other. I, for one, hope that can change.

  Love,

  Your father, Payton Rhodes

  I mash the "Reply" button, then angrily type out a sarcastic note. Something to the effect of, "After urging my mother to lie about the affair and abort me...after acknowledging my existence only after the story broke in the papers...now, after thirty-two years, you want to buy me dinner on the eve of the biggest moment of my life?"

  I delete the message before pressing "Send."

  I'm a jumble of frustration, resentment, and—to my surprise—a strange joy. As pissed as I am at my father, I want to meet him. Want to know him. I didn't know how much I wanted this message until it arrived.

  Now's not the time to deal with it, though. I close the email and open the Facebook app. The best distraction there is.

  I scroll through my newsfeed, stopping on a photo of Peter Colton. The photo is on a post by Bird, my old co-worker at The Barker. It's the result of one of those Facebook quizzes where you answer questions about yourself and a magical algorithm spits out your ideal profession, which Harry Potter house you belong in, or what Game of Thrones family is most likely to murder you in your sleep. This particular quiz is called, "Which Ameritocracy Candidate Are You Destined to Marry?"

  Bird got Peter Colton and shared the results of his quiz with the comment, "I'm sorry, Mia."

  Against my better judgment, I click through to the quiz, agree to allow Facebook to share my information with Political Quizzes, Inc., and begin answering questions.

  1. Do you plan to marry a man or a woman?

  Man.

  2. Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, or Centennial?

  I never know where these generations begin or end, but Steph once told me I was a disappointment to my millennial brothers and sisters because I didn't take my first selfie until I was twenty-five so…

  Millennial.

  3. Do you prefer to save your money for a rainy day or spend it now because you only live once?

  I think about Bluebird, the fully electric 1964 Mustang I bought with the one big chunk of cash my dad gave me.

  Spend it now.

  4. Outfit you find sexiest: Military fatigues, business suit, shorts and flip flops, jeans and t-shirt.

  I regret ever clicking on this quiz.

  As usual, it's reinforcing my love-hate relationship with Facebook, with social media, and with technology in general. As much as I want to close the app and power down the phone, I answer the questions out of a compulsion I don't understand.

  Business Suit.

  5. Tax the rich or cut government programs?

  One of the things I hate about online quizzes is that they offer dichotomous choices in a complex world, but I go with…

  Tax the rich.

  6. Should the electoral college be abolished?

  No.

  7. Should a private business owner have the right to refuse service to a patron for spiritual or religious reasons?

  This is a tough one because it opens the door for all sorts of discrimination, but I'm close to a First Amendment absolutist, and patrons should be equally free to organize boycotts of the business so, reluctantly…

  Yes.

  8. Environmental regulations on U.S. businesses are:

  A) Too strict.

  B) Not strict enough.

  C) Just right.

  I choose: B) Not strict enough.

  9. Marijuana:

  A) Legalize it nationally.

  B) Let the states decide.

  C) Strict national laws against it.

  I choose: B) Let the states decide.

  10. Would you support single-payer healthcare?

  I haven't studied this issue in great detail, but my father is one of the most powerful lobbyists for the insurance industry, and they hate single-payer. I never had the chance to rebel against him as a teenager so…

  Yes.

  11. Overall, politically, do you lean far-left, left, center, right, far-right.

  Always a tough question to answer, as I lean left on some issues, center and right on others.

  Center.

  12. More important in a man: Looks or brains?

  Brains.

  13. Your Ameritocracy cru
sh is feeling blue. What do you do to cheer him up?

  A) Take him to a political book talk.

  B) Take him to the church to talk to God.

  C) Take him to the movies to catch the latest action flick.

  D) Take him to the bedroom to…well, you know.

  I'd like to answer D, but the truth is…

  A) Take him to a political book talk.

  I reach the end of the quiz and press Get Results, dreading the answer I expect the quiz to give me.

  And there he is.

  I'm miffed but not shocked as Peter Colton's smiling face pops up with the message: "You're Destined to Marry Peter Colton! He's a brainy centrist who's at home in the boardroom and loves talking politics."

  I sigh and look out the window.

  Peter and I split up a few months ago when I caught him in the shower with another man. And that turned out to be his second worst betrayal over the winter. Two weeks later, he joined Ameritocracy and rose steadily up the leaderboard throughout the spring. He hit number two this morning.

  Today is the last official Ameritoracy event before the final debate. I need it to go well. It should be more manageable than previous events because, as the Democrats and Republicans weeded out candidates during a grueling primary season, so did Ameritocracy. We invited only our top seven candidates this time because Ameritocracy has become a seven-candidate race.

  Charles Blass, our Communist linguistics professor, attempted a slight pivot to the right. He embraced the positions of the social democrats and even opened the door to adopting a few of the positions of the Democratic Party. Though seen as an embrace of the practical and possible by some, the move led his massive cohort of internet fans to turn on him. He was called a "sellout," "a corporate shill," and worse. He still sits at number ten in our rankings, but he's so far behind the top seven that he has no hope of catching up. In his most recent Facebook video, he called on his followers to embrace the candidacy of our leading candidate, Marlon Dixon.

  Wendy Kahananui—our yoga teacher, mindfulness guru, and YouTube star—dropped out two months ago. Her candidacy had survived for a year on the strength of her celebrity and online platform. As we entered the home stretch, though, voters abandoned her for candidates with more specific policy visions. She recently signed a deal to star in a meditation show on the Oprah Channel.

  Billionaire Cecilia Mason suspended her campaign when one of her grandchildren died in a freak accident. But even before that, she'd slipped to number nine, where she still sits. After making a push for the top spot over the winter, Mason uttered a single line at the last debate that cost her about thirty percent of her support. Goaded by Tanner Futch, she admitted to having four private chefs, which started a meme war on social media.

  A meme war she lost badly.

  Until that statement, voters had been alright with a powerful businesswoman running for president. The line hadn't been intended as a brag, but it framed her as a member of the elite class. No one with four chefs understands the problems of everyday Americans, or so the argument went. Over March and April, many of her supporters switched to Avery Axum who, like Mason, is a moderate conservative. Though she hasn't formally endorsed our silver-haired professor, she's indicated her preference in a few cryptically-worded tweets.

  Orin Gottlieb sits at number eight. Like Blass and Mason, our libertarian academic is too far back to have any real shot. After a decent winter and spring, where Gottlieb peaked at number six on our leaderboard, a series of rumors appeared on social media and quickly spread to the mainstream press.

  The rumors claimed that in 2012 Gottlieb attended a meeting of the Bilderberg Group, an annual conference attended by the European and North American political elite, along with experts from industry, finance, academia, and the media. The conference is a favorite target of conspiracy theorists like our number three candidate, Tanner Futch. Gottlieb denied attending the conference, but many of his followers concluded that he wasn't the libertarian he claimed to be. He was a mole—a secret member of the globalist elite posing as a libertarian. Once in office, they claimed, he'd enact the policies of globalism and American destruction.

  The whole episode was beyond confusing. I never saw any evidence that Gottlieb attended the meeting. Even if he had, it wouldn't have been especially out of the ordinary. Academics of all persuasions get invited to those meetings.

  Steph and I wondered whether Tanner Futch planted the rumors because, once they broke, he spent hours talking about them online. At one point, he even descended to using Gottlieb's Judaism as "proof" that he was "one of the global elites trying to destroy America." This was a hit with Futch's fans for depressingly obvious reasons, and peeled away enough of Gottlieb's supporters to leave Futch solidly in the number three spot.

  So we're down to seven candidates with a shot of winning.

  Since Peter entered Ameritocracy, I've been hit by the same five questions in interview after interview.

  1. Did you know Peter was going to enter the race?

  2. Is Ameritocracy a setup?

  3. Did you fake your breakup with Peter so people wouldn't accuse you of playing favorites?

  4. Did he play any role in developing the website and app?

  5. Is your voting secure?

  Over and over, I've said "No" to the first two questions and laughed off the third. The last two are a bit trickier. Peter loaned us one of his top guys early on. Ever since, Benjamin Singh has been our lead tech guy, so I can't say a solid "No" to the fourth question.

  Once Peter entered, my mind went straight to Benjamin. Could I trust him? Should I trust him? And since I couldn't direct my anger and frustration at Peter, I was tempted to aim some at Benjamin because, well, he was in the office with me every day. The whole matter was even more complicated because Steph was still dating him. Is still dating him. And she trusts him.

  After Peter entered, it took me a few days to convince Steph to set up a meeting with Benjamin. We confronted him together, asking him versions of the questions we'd been getting from reporters. He seemed surprised we'd even ask. The idea that he might be a plant apparently hadn't even occurred to him. "I work sixty-hour weeks at Ameritocracy and spend the rest of my waking hours with Steph! I barely even talk to Peter anymore."

  We believed him, but we wanted to be able to answer the question about the voting system with confidence. After an early hack by a team working with former ambassador Thomas Morton—the world's most boring candidate—Benjamin had fortified the system. Every day it gets an automatic audit, bots are eliminated, and a digital log of every vote is run through an algorithm to look for unusual movement.

  After our conversation with Benjamin, we hired two independent consultants to check it. They came to the same conclusion: Ameritocracy is as secure as it can be, much more secure than the state voting systems used in real elections.

  The questions from the press aren't the ones giving me nightmares, though. Every day since Peter entered, I've asked myself one question. Why?

  Why did he enter?

  Why does he want to be president?

  Does he even want to be president?

  My working assumption is that he's a greedy bastard. A liar. A manipulator. I know these things as fact. So he may want to be president to get richer. To have the power to make his friends richer. But Peter is worth over three billion dollars. How much richer does he need to get?

  I don't trust Peter, but I no longer trust my read on him, either.

  The worst part is, so far, Peter has been a pretty good candidate. He's charismatic, handsome, and well-spoken. He's the biggest celebrity to enter Ameritocracy aside from the late David Benson—and he's got more national name recognition than anyone left in our competition. His positions on issues are well-researched and often thoughtful, at least from what I gather. To be honest, I've avoided delving too deeply into his videos and issue papers. When they show up in my social media feeds, I often find myself agreeing with him, which makes me feel st
range.

  Out the window, the brown hills give way to car dealerships, an occasional factory, and the beginnings of residential neighborhoods. I don't like thinking about Peter. I'm tempted to scroll on my phone again, but we're three minutes from Sacramento so I shove it back in my purse. Thinking ahead to the debate, I imagine how I'll greet each of the six non-Peter candidates. Even though I differ with most of them on policy, I'm protective, even fond of a few of them.

  A chirp from my phone interrupts my reverie.

  A new text.

  Peter: We need to talk before the debate. Can you give me ten minutes?

  I try to ignore the message as the train pulls into the station. Peter can call me after the debate if he wants to talk.

  I start to put the phone away, but something nags at me—the thought of sitting at the debate, watching my candidates, and not knowing what Peter wanted to talk about. Having his message just hanging there.

  I hate the feeling of unfinished business, and he knows it.

  He knew I'd say yes.

  Me: Meeting room behind the main stage. Be there in an hour.

  2

  The last time I saw Peter in person, he stood in the driveway in front of his Santa Clarissa mansion. I had just confronted him with the fact that I'd seen him in the shower with a man, and he hadn't put up a fight. In fact, he seemed almost eager to break up. Nevertheless, I'd dumped one of the most eligible bachelors on earth, which is empowering in an odd way.

  Standing in the driveway that day, I felt strong, if a little confused.

  Now, I wait in an overheated breakout room behind the debate stage, feeling anything but empowered. I was tempted to ask why he wanted to meet, but he's my number two candidate and, despite his personal betrayal, he hasn't broken any Ameritocracy rules. I always meet with my candidates when they need to. I can't treat Peter differently out of spite. I'd like to, but I can't.

  I move a little plastic chair behind a desk in the back of the room, directly under what I hope is the air conditioning vent. A wisp of cool air hits my face, but not enough to stave off the stifling heat. From behind the desk, I face the door, allowing me to believe I'm the boss and my employee is about to sit across from me. I press my feet into the cracked linoleum floor, grounding myself as I wait.