I published in data-driven fiction on Medium a piece on the future of tattooing which includes a Rosella Tolfree story.

In the short story entitled, "Rosella Gets Her First Tattoo, and It’s Medical" is set when Rosella is 19 years of age and living in a group house with other online college students. 

You can find the piece here.

And BTW... I’m aware of some who follow certain Christian beliefs about tattoos. I’m fine with that. In no way am I advocating people to rush out and get tattoos. That said, Rosella’s world is a dark dystopian future under the ecological disaster of global warming. So sh*t happens. Sorry I had to say this... but a few got triggered by the image I used for the article. Also I have no tattoos myself.
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 #tattooing  #scifi #shortstory #amreading #amreadingscifi

​By Rosella’s time, there were many political parties, aside from the classic ones like the Republicans, the Democrats, the Libertarians, and the Green Party. Some other parties were the Workers Freedom Party (Communists), the Reformed Torres Party, the American Solidarity Party, the National Socialist Movement (Nazis), and the Sanford Party. All operating at different levels of governance throughout America.
 
One of the most unusual was the Blue Backer Party. This party took its namesake from Judge Kara Blue, a justice in the California County of Placer’s Family Court.
 
Judge Blue created what would become known as the Blue Doctrine when she rendered a custody opinion concerning a couple and child from a non-cloned union, a godseed. The couple involved were being difficult, and Judge Blue had become despondent with both. During the deliberations, abortion became a contentious problem between the couple, as each accused the other pressuring to keep the child during the pregnancy and not allowing the woman to exercise her right to an abortion. It had become clear to Judge Blue that neither party understood the responsibilities of parenthood. They were only looking out for their own self interests.
 
In her opinion, Judge Blue reasoned that “since the state had granted the woman the right to an abortion that this treated said fetus/godseed as a foreign mass that could be removed at will. If so, even if carried to full term, said entity was neither property of nor belonging to the woman and/or the man as said entity was estranged from both. If so, then the government alone has a vested interest in ensuring the most reasonable care of said entity. This doesn’t mean with either the man, the woman, or both. In fact, this could mean left to the state’s discretion based on current available science and technology. It also follows that the right of privacy doesn’t extend to human reproduction when at-will abortion is allowed by the state. This implies that the state has a vested interest in human reproduction and will let what would be a natural biological function be ended at-will for nothing more than the benefit of the social welfare of the state on some level, such as population control. Further, because of the availability of human cloning, now the state has an interest in the population's control for both the economic and the social welfare of the society. It could, in the interest of public health, sterilize the population and use cloning instead. This is made even more self-evident because the state has permitted the private right of abortion to a woman. While it is true for a time viable human cloning wasn’t available, for by making the abortion of a fetus/godseed at the will of women makes it against the interests of the state in the social welfare needs of society with safe human cloning now available. The correction of such reality is the sterilization of either the man or woman or both, and then the use of cloning by the state. This is nothing more than a restoration of the right of human reproduction to the state for the welfare of the society.”
 
It was from this that people would later form the Blue Backer Party and pursue a campaign of state’s right of population control through sterilization and cloning. The followers voluntarily sterilized themselves in a show of dedication. The party never gained enough support to mount any successful candidates at any level of politics in the U.S., but they could provide to the larger parties’ campaign contributions from associated cloning technology corporations. It is rumored that it was from a Blue Backer member that A-4 androids were programmed with the “glitch” that causes female clones to be made with no uterus. This has never been confirmed, but A-4 android manufacturers say the “glitch” has been fixed despite the continuation of the problem. A-4 android manufacturers blame the current issues on the genetics of the users.

​The Dobbs v. Jackson decision changed the landscape of human reproduction in America. In Rosella’s world, it spurred on a series of tit for tat political changes. Such changes included the denial of religious representatives to sign marriage licenses in states where abortion was recognized, but only if the religion opposed either abortion and/or same-sex marriage. These same states also nullified the recognition of all marriages from pro-life states, requiring those who got a license from such a state to get a new one. The same occurred in pro-life states in retaliation against the pro-choice states.
 
Some pro-life jurisdictions erected border check points along state lines to ensure no one was seeking an abortion in another state. And other local jurisdictions refused to work with each other based on their abortion stance. In some locations, the local authorities stopped for inspections the smuggling of abortive pills via interstate commerce using pill sniffing dogs. The same occurred at airports in certain pro-life states.
 
There were challenges brought forth, but without the US Congress using its powers in the 14th amendment to regulate rights not expressed in the US constitution, many of these cases fell back to the 10th and 9th amendments. Leaving things to the individual states to determine what they did not spell out. The only thing the courts did was show if due process was being violated or similar state restrictions on liberties spelled out in the constitution.
 
The WTF Act

One thing did come out of this time of chaos, the “WTF Act” as coined by Tiffany McKenzie, a popular podcaster of the time. The actual name was the Fuller-McFadden Woman’s Act. The act was a major bi-partisan attempt to calm down the nation by bolstering funding to each side for various woman programs across the nation. In the act was federal funding for women in pro-choice states for abortions, but only if the state recognized the male reproductive right. The male reproductive right was that in any state where abortion was legal, a male’s parental obligations were on an at-will basis should their offspring exist at any stage of development. Pro-choice states that opted in enshrined in their constitutions that a woman’s rights to have or not have an abortion trumped a man’s at-will reproductive right while she was carrying. This was done to ensure the woman wasn’t pressured into a situation during pregnancy concerning the outcome. Legal challenges were done but all failed on the technicalities involving the language of the act.
 
For pro-life states, increased support for families and singles mothers, but in exchange, said woman had to work a minimum of twenty hours a week and be monitored by the state to ensure program compliance and catch any potential abuse. Pro-life states had to agree to specifics dealing with increased penalties and support systems for abused women to take part in the federal program. Again, challenges concerning the work requirements were made as a form slavery, but all failed due to the language of the act and previous historical precedents of similar work requirements for Federal programs.
 
Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) and In vitro fertilization (IVF)

Overtime, some Pro-Life states politically became centers focusing on ART and IVF as the alternative to abortion. With personhood bills in place, it shifted the legal focus to the creation of life, even outside of the womb. Politicians dumped both state and federal dollars into these states for increased access and technological development. This in turn began to push medical science to seek increased viability outside of the womb at earlier gestational ages, including support technologies to allow for embryonic transfers between women across state lines. Artificial womb technology continued to advance until the point that it became viable for a fertilized egg to be placed in one and matured for delivery.

The increased development of ART and IVF through the years caused society to question once more the use of technologies like CRISPR to improve the human condition. Humanity was pushing more into space and the idea of using genetic engineering became a favorable way to deal with the health hazards of space. It would be the android engineer, Miwa Oshima, who would conceive and design the first fully integrated android capable of birthing human clones. She called her creation the ultimate triumph in automated human reproduction. A means to solve self-sustaining population issues for Mars, as well as similar problems for low birth rate nations on Earth. By Rosella’s time, society had fully embraced genetic engineering of humans and the use of androids to replace the need for human reproduction. This especially was true for the mining colonies on Mars, which were dominated by male populations.
 
China and the Cat People of Memphis

Chinese medical businesses got involved and purchased some ART/IVF clinics. They then exported to China unused embryos through a government loophole at the time of not recognizing the embryos as US citizens. They used these embryos for human-chimera experiments​. Many suspected during Rosella’s time that both the Cat People of Memphis and the Badger Men of Buffalo were the end products of these earlier experiments. Rumors continue even in Rosella’s time that China has a slave army of human-primate chimeras working on Mars and the asteroid belt.
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Considering the recent events, I feel the need to comment as an author with a world filled with gun violence. I don’t want to diminish the horribleness of the May 25th Texas shooting tragedy, or the senseless loss of such young lives, but Rosella Tolfree’s world is dystopian, and many today don’t understand the mechanics of gun violence.
 
It’s easy today to say the shooter was an insane one off, or to proclaim we need to do something about the gun lobby, but historically in the U.S. nothing has been done for various political and financial reasons. And right now, there’s a war in Ukraine that’s funding a complete arms industry, and we can easily justify such use of guns, but history has shown that after the war is over the left-over weapons are used in crimes and other violence.
 
Recently, two Hill commentators, Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave, covered I believe a reality check on this issue. Ms. Gray showing the illogical comparison of gun laws between states and gun violence. Which is another dimension to this problem in the U.S. in that we are not like other nations with our laws. We are a republic with 50 states and 50 different ways to do things. And Mr. Soave who cites the actual stats with gun violence, showing that a clear majority of cases are single shooter events and suicides, more so than mass shootings. It’s that mass shootings get the most attention in society than suicides. Both issues, as noted by Ms. Gray, tie back to availability of guns in American society.
 
Solving the Mental Illness Gun Problem
 
If we say the killers of mass shootings, like that which just took place in Texas, is because of mental illness, but we still want a society where guns are freely accessible. Then the only choice is to subject all peoples to annual psychological screenings kept in a government database to ensure that no one of psychological issue gets a gun. If society waits around for someone to be evaluated at the time of purchase, you miss personal history. That could be an issue when the person is being evaluated. And if you outlaw only those with any history of psychological problems, then you are missing the undiagnosed. That’s why all peoples from birth would have to undergo constant evaluation. That would make a dystopian society, and one where people would pay to get out of the exams or figure someway to cheat.
 
There are two other choices: Accepting the routine killings as the normal for this individual freedom. Basically, it’s the price society must pay for such gun freedom. This is the path Rosella’s world has taken during her time. Or society must restrict gun use like that of Japan. Which has one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the world.
 
Rosella Tolfree’s World and Gun Violence
 
Things are so bad in Rosella Tolfree’s time that murder via gun has become legal in Texas because of the court case State of Texas vs. Hanson. This decision was predicated on the legal construct that gun rights were in control of the individual and that only the individual had the right to determine if someone had the right to live or not with the exercise of those gun rights, and not by the state or any other government authority. Although this ruling was restricted to Texas, this didn’t stop people from exercising the newly founded interpretation of the Second amendment.
 
This helped to reinforce the domestic terrorist activities of specific groups operating in the U.S. This is a list of the groups currently in operation that are considered a threat of concern-
 
John Elliott’s Democratic National Militia – This group flourishes after the collapse of the NRA because of IRS issues. But this movement leads to the single largest battle against Federal Forces by U.S. citizens in a long time. Many of the DNM attack Federal monuments in Washington, D.C. with vehicles.
 
The Darwinists- This is a group of gun rights enthusiasts who have taken the idea of gun freedom to the extreme by combining it with Darwinian logic. They rampage periodically on mass killings in the name of human evolution and survival.
 
The Unit of Civil Enforcement (UCE)- This is a splinter division of the DNM that rides around taking the law into their own hands doing vigilante justice on the spot.
 
The Order of the Holy Vengeance- This is a fundamental Christian group that kills anyone who doesn’t follow their beliefs.
 
Eventually, after Rosella Tolfree’s time, there’s a reinterpretation of the Second amendment away from the individual right of gun ownership, and back to the original purpose as understood before the mid-20th century. Based on both historical evidence of how the U.S. Army was formed prior to the Civil War, and the specific wording of the Second amendment the judiciary system will find that the true meaning of the Second amendment has more to do with the formation of a national army at the Federal level than the rights of individuals to own arms in society.

In short, the individual's right expressed in the Second amendment was a necessary reality so the Federal level could have a standing army at that time. After the Civil War, the nature of how the Federal armed forces are formed changed, but these later courts will find that the Second amendment still applies in that individuals within those armed forces still need the right to possess arms to do the work. Thus this leaves the Federal level to restrict individual gun ownership outside the context of the armed forces. Only with this legal change does America’s gun violence finally become less in Rosella’s world.

ADDENDUM
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The New York Post recently posted Elon Musk’s position on gun rights. “‘I strongly believe that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government. Historically, maintaining their power over the people is why those in power did not allow public ownership of guns,’ Musk told the outlet.”

While it is a truism that governments and their leaders prefer all the weapons in the government's power versus the individual, they typically do this for a civil society versus a show of force. Only in governments which are true dictatorships do you see the government's use of weapons as a force against the people. Ironically, history has also shown that the people in such situations rise with their own weapons.

The problem with Musk’s statement is that the safeguard potential depends on the subjective view of the individual owner of the gun concerning their government, and not on based on an objective standard judging those in power. Under this logic, John Wilkes Booth is justified in his murder of President Lincoln. The same would be true for Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK. And yet, America has allowed the personal ownership of guns in both times. In each case mentioned, the individual owner of the gun made the subjective decision that the President was tyrannical and had to be killed. Musk’s statement would also likewise justify the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th in that those doing so were simply attempting to overthrow what they saw as a tyrannical and corrupt process.

Bottom-line, Musk’s statement being subjective allows the individual to decide when a government is truly tyrannical is a recipe for chaos and lawlessness. Something to consider as he attempts to purchase Twitter.


Another Post About Gun Violence
Gun Rights, Gun Violence, and Crime

During the Americans First Period of the Era of Transition of the First Age of Humanity, was born Eduarda Martínez. A time when the U.S. was being hostile to southern immigration and both economic recessions and poverty racked Central America. She would grow up to be responsible for the second time in history for America to have a conflict with Mexico.
 
At eleven, her family purchased their way across “la pared” or the wall, as it was known. Both major US political parties had become entrenched in supporting anti-southern immigration politics and big supporters of the security of the American-Mexican border. By this point in time, big security construction contractors were involved in annual Congressional lobbying efforts for ongoing upgrades and repairs of the southern border. These same contractors would fuel national fears of waves of immigrants coming for the hard-earned American jobs, which were increasing in hourly pay rates. The contractors created deepfakes showing immigrants coming for the border. Pundits and politicians parroted these same deepfakes as talking points, reinforcing the messages to the American populace. As a result, there was a decline in using Spanish as a language in the U.S. There was also an uptick in violence against those of Hispanic origins, but there was also a lacking coverage of this violence by mainstream sources, so most people thought this was fake news.
 
The journey for Eduarda would end up in a tragedy she would never forget. Her parents and older brother were shot dead by the U.S. Border Patrol, and she was taken into custody, processed as an illegal minor, held in a detention camp for nearly a month where she was sexually terrorized by older boys there, and eventually deported back to Mexico to the custody of an uncle.
 
She would eventually earn a degree in law and become involved in a small party called El Partido Nacionalista Mexicano (PNM) or the Mexican Nationalist Party. At a young age, she quickly rose in the ranks of the party because of her popularity with the people. She got elected to Chamber of Deputies in the Congress of the Union. Eventually, she was elected to the Senate. She was a fiery Anti-Americano politician and pushed her party’s agenda of putting Mexico’s interests ahead of the U.S.’s anti-immigration stance. Her opponents called her La Putin de Mexico (the Putin of Mexico) for her popularity with the people after the historical figure, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and his popularity with the Russian people. In response, she said, “I welcome this name. What politician doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of such a grand master?”
 
Her party’s agenda was very popular with Mexico’s electorate during a time when the Mexican people saw America as hostile to them. A theme reinforced by popular news on local social media in Mexico.
 
In the Senate, she helped to form an alliance with China by being the chair of the President’s delegation to China. She negotiated with the Chinese high-tech manufacturing investments in Mexico, the securement of short-range tactical nuclear weapons, help for Mexico to continue to develop nuclear weapons and the building up Mexico’s military arms complex. This was in exchange for increased border access to the region by Chinese authorities. A move which politically shocked the U.S. and motivated some U.S. politicians to attempt peaceful negotiations with Mexico. All attempts failed, as neither side would compromise.
 
It would be after these events that Eduarda would be elected as President, and this is when she showed her true agenda. The PNM by this point was in control of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies that allowed Eduarda to reorganize the constitution making certain oppositional political parties illegal, allowing government censoring of the broadcast of media in Mexico on the internet or through other sources, the illegalization of specific sexual practices such as homosexuality, the political restoration of marriage to only between a man and woman, the elimination of religious freedom by banning all organized religions operating in Mexico (a broader restoration of the old 1940s laws), broadening the powers of the President to be more authoritarian, and extending the term of the President from its six years non-renewable term to a twenty-year non-renewable term. She did all this in the name of protecting Mexico from the American aggressor and restoring Mexico to its rightful place in the world.
 
Her first act as president included the appointment of 5,000 People Judges who went about the states of Mexico cleaning up the long history of organized crime. They did so by brutally acting as judge, jury, and executioner for anyone associated with organized crime. Eduarda saw this as righting years of a wrong inflicted upon the Mexican people by the Americano government for its war on drugs.
 
Through public speeches, she would remind her people of the brutal occupation of Mexico City by Americans in 1847 and the illegal taking of northern territories by a forced agreement with the Americans. She spoke of the years of how their brothers and sisters to the north had been used as slaves for the Americano capitalists, and how the Americano government purposely kept Central America in the economic dark ages. She supported selective alternative histories. For example, the idea that Central America would have been better off if the Americano South had won the Civil War and expanded control into the region. Eduarda showed this alternative history through the citation of the works by Silina Nessia Artemievna, a contemporary Russian historian whose writing speculated on alternative outcomes of major events. Eduarda would also use any major holiday, from Cinco de Mayo in the state of Puebla, to Mexican Independence Day on September 16th for large scale military parades.
 
During the early days of her administration, she was under attack by rebel media for scandalous stories of sexual excess involving two to three men at a time. Eduarda never married, and it was common knowledge she was an alcoholic and sex addict. Through her control of other media, she discredited the rebels and had them publicly arrested and incarcerated for life.
 
It would be her administration that established the Return to Mexico Movement in the U.S. The movement became popular with Hispanics and Native peoples who felt slighted by the current U.S. politics. The POTUS at the time saw this movement as a foreign sponsored terrorist organization and tried to remove it from American soil. This only strengthened the movement’s resolve to where, in California, a ballot referendum was to be held on leaving the union for Mexico. The referendum would fail by a mere 2,447 votes.
 
This gave Eduarda the impetus to move against America to help free California from the Intolerantes Americanos (American Bigots). According to her administration, the voting was rife with improprieties. She would mobilize the Mexican army to the 1,954 miles of the border as a show of force. The POTUS would counter with a similar show of force. This became a bitter standoff since neither side wished to use their nuclear weapons.
 
With the fear of nuclear war with Mexico, and increased protesting by the Return to Mexico Movement, riots broke out in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Washington, DC. It was commonplace to see people in Texas openly carrying heavy machine guns and other arms, as they organized into citizen militias. The U.S. armed forces saw an increase in those willing to volunteer to fight against Mexico.
 
Five years prior, the CIA embroiled Eduarda’s administration in a guerrilla warfare along the border of Guatemala. A group of CIA backed rebels, known as Amanecer Azul or Blue Dawn (the name is reputed to come from the CIA’s operation name) would do violent incursions into Mexican border territories. They would go across the border and terrorize the locals and burn down villages. Despite her relationship with Ricardo Alcocer, the strongman of Guatemala, his government could not root out the Blue Dawn rebels or stop the CIA. She suspected he was on the payroll of the CIA and plotted to have him overthrown and replaced. She would be successful at the same time as another major event occurred, the Tijuana Incident.
 
The Tijuana Incident started with a failed coup attempt against Eduarda’s presidency, which she blamed against the CIA and prompted her in retaliation to launch an offensive along the Tijuana border. The Mexican forces rolled across the border into Imperial Beach, successfully taking the area. This triggered skirmish fighting along the entire length of the Mexican-American border, with artillery being lobbed across the line. The border city of El Paso was devastated by the shelling. Eduarda made threats of using her Chinese tactical nukes against cities in Texas unless the Americans capitulated to her demands. The POTUS refused and put the American nuclear arsenal on high alert. The event would end with a thermite bomb explosion occurring in San Diego, California. Eduarda’s administration said this was a false flag event done by the Americans, whereas the Americans blamed the Return to Mexico Movement operating behind the lines. This bomb leveled a major section of the southern part of the city and could have triggered a nuclear response by the U.S. if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of the President of France, Marie-Pierre Pretre, in talking with the POTUS. It is uncertain what she said to the POTUS, but it’s clear that her call changed the outcome.
 
It would be Marie-Pierre Pretre, who would diffuse the situation between the two nations. She had made it her mission to see that peace would be restored between Mexico and America. It was an unconfirmed rumor that this only happened because the POTUS at the time was having an affair with the French President. This was information that Eduarda's administration was privy to and was used as political leverage in the negotiations.
 
The brokered cease fire and treaty resulted in the U.S. giving up parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico in compensation for the invasion of Mexico City back in 1847. Lands along the 109th meridian, including the city of San Diego, were now part of Mexico and formed a new Mexican state called Tucson, with the capital being the former Tucson, Arizona. In exchange for the territory, Mexico agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program and remove its Chinese nuclear weapons in five years.
 
It would be shortly after the ratification of this treaty by the Congress of the Union that someone would violently assassinate Eduarda in the President’s mansion. A vocal but minority faction in the PNM saw the loss of Mexico’s nuclear capabilities as a shameful weakness in the Eduarda’s administration and were blamed for her assassination. Members of the minority faction were rounded up, put on trial, and found guilty of her murder. The government sentenced them to public execution.
 
After this, the PNM lost its grips on the Mexican political machine. The people elected a new coalition government which undid much of what Eduarda’s rule and PNM party had created.
 
The conflict between Mexico and the U.S. changed American politics concerning immigration into the U.S. as the Return to Mexico Movement morphed into the Immigrant Workers Party. While the party could not secure any offices, it would become part of the U.S. political landscape that helped to change American views on immigration and citizenship. Which would eventually help in the creation of the Naturalization Amendment, codifying the process of American citizenship at the constitutional level.