The Caryatids

"Lionel does have a certain point," Radmila said. "His core demographic is rebellious male teens. Especially, lower-income."

"That is where the Family placed me as an idol," Lionel said. "I am playing the role I was given. I'm playing straight to my fan base."

" Weapons, Lionel?"

"Sure, technically, shoulder-launched rockets are 'weapons.' But practically speaking, they're rapid urban-demolition equipment. You wouldn't know this, being a girl-but very few people ever get killed by shoulder-launched rockets. It's the buildings that get killed by shoulder-launched rockets. It's all about 'warchitecture.'"

Lionel pointed his leather-gloved finger outside the gorgeously lit restaurant window and at the gray, lightless, derelict structures lining the shore of the Pacific. That endless mummified seaside slum was a sight to daunt the bravest real-estate developer: armored in chain-link fencing, wrapped in razor wire, with ancient vidcams and hand-lettered death-threat signs. Many of the buildings were swathed in tattered plastic shrink-wrap against the rising damp.

"Ever since I was born," said Lionel, "I've had to look at that mess. That giant monument to human stupidity. I want that all gone. And no, I don't mean some nice legal settlement. I don't mean forty more years of insurance cheats and litigation. These are abandoned, uninhabitable ruins, ruined by the climate crisis. They belong to morons who don't even live there now and will never live there again. While my people, my viewers, my core audience, the poor people, Glyn, the street kids without shirts and shoes-they are living heaped up in their Little Foreign Ghetto villages. They are piled on top of each other like used tires."

Lionel clenched his gloved fists dramatically. "So we have two basic moral choices here. Either we do nothing about that, and the poor people eventually riot and set fire to their own slums. That would be the traditional Los Angeles method. Or else we provide some inspired civic leadership. My people charge out here and they just set fire to all that. Yes. My people just smash it. They blow it to pieces, and burn it to the ground. It's all abandoned anyway-so that takes my fans maybe a week."

Glyn was nervously fiddling with the restaurant's gorgeous silverware. The silverware was tagged and interactive and came with a dazzling panoply of oyster forks, butter knives, and two-tined olive piercers. "You're really serious about this."

"Think it through, Glyn. Two years later, we've got a bunch of flood-friendly projects built on high pilings. We get a major construction boom in LA. Sure, we get some legal trouble first-of course we get that-but the casualties, very low, and suddenly we are right into a brand-new era. Low-income housing-during a climate crisis-that's got to be within the shoreline areas. That's got to happen. It's the only urban policy that makes any sense. And if we had any guts, we'd just do it."

Glyn glared at Radmila. "Your political scripter wrote that for him. Lionel never used to talk like this. Never."

"No, no," Radmila said. "My scripter's not that good! I never heard that kind of talk before."

"Who's writing your set-speeches, Lionel? Who have you been linking to?"

"Admit it," said Lionel smugly, "my set-speech just now was fantastic. You don't have, like, one single good word to say against my awesome new set-speech."

"Your gangster fans are gonna shoot each other with rockets! It'll be a total bloodbath."

"Like you care about that!" scoffed Lionel. "All you want to do is write games that send them running the streets like bowling pins. You've got them where they can't tell immersive games from the LA street grid."

Glyn shook her head. "I know that we can get away with some demolition work right after an earthquake. You're talking about smashing the oldest, biggest real-estate mess in all of California. We'd be held responsible."

"Not you, Glyn: me. I'm the responsible party-and I am an under-age juvenile. That's why my plan works. We just give them a very classic set pitch: He's the troubled rebel star kid burning out on drugs! That's a hundred-year-old Hollywood story, everybody knows it by heart. Sure, my fans become arsonists. My fans are juvenile delinquents, so they got in over their heads. So what? My fan base has got a lot to be arsonists about!"

Glyn was very troubled. "You actually love your fans, Lionel?"

"What else is a star for? Without them, we're nothing! Why else do I go through all this? I personify the blighted aspirations of my viewer-ship, that's why I do it! That's why my fans pay to watch me work! If I give them an awesome carnival like this-hey, I'd become the Voice of a Generation."