The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

FRANK GAETZ, 47, FORMER MAYOR OF _____: This may sound trite and I don’t mean it to, but writing the statement announcing the initiative was actually the most difficult part. I’m not discounting the work the team did. But it all falls apart if the statement isn’t right. You only get one shot at this. I remember the presidential primaries. And the reason the socialist lost to the centrist among Black voters in South Carolina in 2020 was, as told to me by a Black Carolinian, that voting for the socialist would require the Black community to believe that white people were capable of doing something they’ve never done before: willingly and openly share in the economic bounty of this country. I needed to convince them that we were there. But I also needed to convince my white constituents. And if this whole effort was dressed in machine neutrality, if I could say “blame the algorithm,” then maybe we could get away with the whole thing. Maybe it would feel a little bit less like a heist.

I was prepared to be the meat-shield here. If anything, it almost seemed like that was the point of the job. The team that Richie Perkins put together was formed sort of ad hoc. It was very Avengers. [Chuckling.] All of us from these different disciplines—​lawyers, statisticians, historians, activists, politicians, even the medical professionals we consulted with—​when they realized what Richie was doing, none of them balked. None of them thought it was impossible or too difficult. They all had the imagination for it. And it was my job to have the stomach for it.

Richie had brought the team together on his own, and they worked in secret, then prepared a report that landed on my desk. Richie and I talked for a long time. About the contents, then about the rollout, about who would get what and when. Before I knew it, I’d bought in. I didn’t even realize, but he’d converted me to the cause of reparations. And he knew it had to be me. It had to be the white guy.

It wasn’t just that white constituents would listen to me with less resentment than they would feel if it were coming from a Black mayor. It was the righting of things. A white guy does it and it feels less like theft and more like penance.

You look at the state the country was in at the time, it seemed like everything was getting torn down. And there’s me: young, rising star in the Democratic Party, not yet so progressive that the Establishment can’t sink its claws into me, but not so far bought that I can’t be pulled further to the left. And this opportunity lands on my desk in the form of this report. I used every bit of political capital I had to get the other city council members on board. Comptroller, all of them. Reminded me of that Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. You know why Chief Justice Warren worked so hard to get a unanimous decision? Anything less might’ve led the South to start another Civil War.