THE LIBERAL UPRISING

Dr. Hans Decker closed his eyes and opened them. The assessment room was silent, except for an occasional soft click from one of its older biosensors. Decker continued: “Ms. Miller, Rachel, please answer the question. Why did you slit your wrists?” His gaze shifted from the BrainScan3000 to her clenched face.

“Madonna took my gun away. All I had was a kitchen knife.”

“President Madonna took everybody’s guns,” Decker replied. “What I mean is, why did you want to kill yourself in the first place?” (Most of the information for his report would stream directly from the scanners, but intentionality laws required him to ask.)

In the two decades preceding the Liberal Uprising, science had proven that ninety-three percent or more of human behavior is beyond conscious control, the product of nature (genes), nurture (upbringing), and brain damage caused by exposure to Fox News and MSNBC.

The remaining conduct, at most seven percent, was where any vestige of personal responsibility might reside. It was Decker’s job to root it out, then file a disposition report along with a recommendation.

Genuine “seven-percenters” were unpredictable because they pos-sessed a modicum of independent thought. Under special circumstances they could be held accountable for their actions, and that’s where Decker came in. In Decker’s experience, though, most people turned out to be “zero-percenters,” knee-jerkers to the core.

Rachel lowered her eyes. “My husband divorced me and ran off with our golden retriever. They got married.”

“That’s legal now,” Decker reminded her. Decker had supported The Interspecies Marriage Act. Love is love, he felt.

“I know,” Rachel said, “but it’s not the first time he cheated on me with a nonhuman.”

Decker had a pretty good idea what was coming next, because he’d seen it before. He changed the subject. “We’ll get back to that. But why didn’t you just check into an assisted dying facility—there are three in town—instead of slitting your wrists?” (Directly after the revolution, the Right to Life movement had dissolved, replaced by the Right to Death industry.)

Rachel looked up at him. “I live outside town and my bicycle is broken. It was too far to walk.”

Decker regarded her skeptically. She was wearing a skintight red body suit, which Decker could see fit her rather well. (That wouldn’t go in his report.) He noted the Under Armour logo, which to Decker still looked like an “H.” The brand was so popular now that Under Armour had become the world’s second largest corporation, right behind Spotify. Rachel looked fit enough to walk into town.

Rachel softened when she noticed Decker eyeing her. “I don’t like leaving a mess. If I still had a car, I would have used a facility in town.”

As soon as liberals seized power and installed Madonna, she authorized a fourth federal bailout of the U.S. auto industry, plus legislation abolishing fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Electric cars of all kinds immediately flooded the market. Ford introduced an electric monster truck, the FU-150, which became the best-selling vehicle in Texas. (A year later Texas became a separate country, because when it threatened to secede, President Madonna promptly signed the secession papers.)

The electric car era came to an end when authorities discovered that over a thousand teenagers had died after snorting lithium extracted from car batteries. (Lithium was one of three substances not covered under The Drug Legalization Act.)

The progressive majority, already reveling in its newfound rule, raised their Chardonnay glasses once again as the U.S. became a pedal-powered nation. Horses too were permitted, as long as riders carried a pooper-scooper.

“Maybe,” Decker thought to himself as he and Rachel appraised each other, “she’s a seven-percenter.” He moved on: “Let’s get back to your husband. You say he’d cheated on you earlier?”

“It’s a long story,” she replied. Decker lightly held her gaze and thought to himself, “Yeah, but I bet I’ve heard it before.” “Go on,” he said.

Rachel propped herself up in the chair. “Do you remember when Miley Cyrus hosted the Academy Awards, right after the rebellion? Well, every year they have this segment called ‘In Memoriam.’ They pay tribute to a list of film celebrities who died that year.”

“I’ve seen the segment, but not that year,” Decker explained.

"Unfortunately, I did see it, and so did my husband. Miley Cyrus had them wheel out the casket of each dead celebrity, one after another, and right there on center stage she opens the casket and has sex with the dead celebrity! Man or woman. She just jumps in and starts grinding all over them.”

“That’s legal now,” Decker reminded her, although he himself had not supported The Sexual Freedoms Act. In Decker’s medical opinion, necrophilia was not a sexual orientation.

“My husband loved it, and he told me it was the highest-rated Academy Awards ever. People actually wanted the show to run longer. But The Oscars wasn’t the problem.”

Decker suspected what she’d say next. “Go on.”

“Well, the show turned out to be so popular that they came out with these life-size electric Miley Cyrus dolls. You must have seen one, the Twerk-a-Magic 5000, by Hasbro. Lots of guys have them, and lots of women too.”

Decker cut in: “Slow down, let me guess.” He regarded Rachel. Ten minutes ago, hunched into her chair, she’d seemed fragile, but now that she was upright and animated, Rachel radiated potency. “I’ll bet your relationship went downhill from there, right?”

Rachel leaned back, exhaled. “Right, I suck at twerking.”

Decker doubted that. His job, though, was to evaluate Rachel, not fantasize about her. He needed to be especially careful because the definition of sexual harassment had been revised to, “Any sexual thought or action involving another being without his, her, or its express written consent.”

Following the revolution, healthcare finally progressed. Congress implemented a single-payer system, the payer to be named later. (They eventually named Donald Trump as payer, because he could afford it and because he had made us all sick for so long.)

The program, dubbed MadonnaCare, provided health care to all Americans and their house pets (but not to livestock, which upset animal rights activists). A citizen could be turned down for only three reasons: eating processed foods, being out of shape, or drinking Budweiser.

Decker fumbled for the array of switches on his desk. He flicked off the BrainScan3000 and the other biosensors. The assessment was over but no report would be filed. Rachel was a seven-percenter, he was certain. A seven-percenter was rare, especially an attractive one in a skintight Under Armour body suit. Her husband had left her for a pooch. She deserved better.

He looked in her eyes and said, “Let’s get of here. We can go to my place.”

Rachel leaned forward, tilted her head ever-so-slightly to the side, and holding Decker’s gaze replied, “OK.”

They rode silently to Decker’s house, he peddling fervently and she on the handlebars. They turned into his driveway, Rachel jumped off, and Decker laid the bicycle on the asphalt. As they hurried through the door, Decker tugged off his blazer while Rachel tidied her body suit and fluffed her hair.

They scuttled past the granite-top kitchen island, past the wine rack, past the yoga mats, past the Native American pottery, past the distressed-wood coffee table with the copy of An Inconvenient Truth on it, past the treadmill, and past the poster of Bob Marley hanging in the hallway.

​Decker hop-stepped into the bedroom, Rachel in tow. Rachel gasped and her eyes bulged. On Decker’s Japanese-style bed lay a golden retriever and a Twerk-a-Magic 5000. The doll had a paper cut-out of Madonna’s face pasted onto it.