Conversations With A Fox

The fox kid in the suit ate like there was a hole in his neck, like it was impossible to fill his stomach.

“Nobody cares,” the fox said, waving around a leg of chicken. “You run around here, you tell people that a Siberian gang are pumping an illicit oil well and smuggling it into the Russian supply chain, who’s gonna care?”

Eversen glanced at Erlnicht, who shrugged, as if he didn’t know.

Eversen didn’t know who’d care, either. But he said it, again. “They’re running an illegal oil well. They’re using the money to prop up a criminal government.”

“You’ve travelled.” The fox cracked the leg’s false bone – some kind of plastic wood – between his teeth. Sneered at it, and inspected the next leg of chicken carefully. “What do people over in Europe and Eurasia think of the MACP, huh?”

“Don’t know,” Eversen admitted.

“What. You don’t talk to the locals?”

“No.” The locals didn’t usually want much to do with him.

The fox squinted at Eversen. “Most of them only remember that the MACP gengineered the bioweapons that came within a hair’s breadth of ending the world.” Between nibbles at the leg, shearing apart the spots the meat was bonded onto its false bone, he added, “they think we’re the most criminal government there is. But they all want good food and luxuries and money so they look the other way. And over here, they want the fuckin’ oil, because it’s cheaper than bioengineered chemical feedstock. So we look the other way.”

“So nobody cares.” Eversen gripped one hand with the other. Wishing there were something he could squeeze.

“Course not. Nobody can fucking do anything.” Wetly slurping the meat off the bone, the fox kid waved the neat cylinder around at the people walking around the canyon’s rim. “They care about shit they can do something about. You wanna see them fucking rabid over something? Tell them posting on socials makes a difference, or fuck with their grocery delivery. Shit, you want to see someone do something, give them a problem they think writing an angry letter fixes. They’ll write the fucking letter. You want them to ignore it? Fuck, just point out organic free-trade chocolate exploits child labour. They can’t do shit about that – you think any of them will even bother switching to ‘ponics? More expensive, doesn’t taste as good.” He hunched up over his meal, plucking up a wad of fries to dig into the sauce. “Fuck that. You want people to care about this oil well? Give them something they can do.”

“Like what?” Eversen frowned.

The teenaged fox stared at him with an almost ancient intensity. As if this punk in a suit held all the wisdom in the world, and Eversen was a poor, ignorant child. Then the fox grinned, savagely. “You already did it a couple years ago, in Azerbaijan. Now you can do it again.”

“We had the support of Andercom. I tried them. They aren’t interested.”

“You don’t want Andercom on this.” The fox tilted his head, blinking slowly. “You wanna go talk to the Mexican embassy.”

“The Mexican government?” Eversen blinked. “Why would they get involved?”

Rolling his eyes, the teenager stuffed his mouth with fries and sat back, chewing. Told the two dogs that seemed twice his size, “Mexican nationalists are in the middle of taking over the Mex government. The Mexnats make their money in a three way smuggler’s trade war between Texan separatists, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Settled Malay Refugee Bloc. What the fuck you think the Mexnats are smuggling for the Texans?”

“… Oil?”

“How much you think they’re willing to squeeze out of the Mexican government to off their competition? All those Eurasian fucks smuggle through the Smarb – that’s how your problem boys get their oil onto the international markets. Jesus, do I have to spell everything out for you?”