It all started with this fluke from Nacadoches named Quinlow Harbuckle. Now this Harbuckle got it into his mind after teaching painting to juvenile offenders for fifteen years that he was going to run to be the mayor of Austin. Late-in-life interviews suggest that he experienced some sort of otherworldly vision which was involved in his decision to run. It was a sleepy election, which hardly garnered any attention beyond the local papers, and had very little in the way of interesting coverage. Fluff pieces about the personal habits of an ageing hippie, coded into the speech of realpolitik. Harbuckle’s republican incumbent was known to carry a firearm upon him at all times, and became known as the ‘assassin mayor’ for the execution of a shoplifter named Darrell Esposito, aged 27, for which he was exonerated by the State of Texas. The two men looked worlds apart, standing on their stage for the sparsely attended debate. Harbuckle wore a linen shirt with a rainbow tie and tricolour pocket square tucked into a dark gray sports jacket with faux-leather elbowpads, while his opponent, Lester Holt, a man of few words on the best days, wore a black suit jacket and white cotton shirt, and a bolo tie with a Texas shaped state-flag on it. There are still ample photos of the event, although not everyone recognizes its importance in the subsequent turns of history. Good luck trying to scrounge up video footage of that night, though.
Most agree it started in Texas, at least. The mayor called together the city officials and informed them of his initiative to make the capitol building run on green energy by the end of the year. These career politicians cried in protest: “It cannot be done! It is not the responsibility of the city of Austin, but the great state of Texas itself!” “There are no available leasings for such a massive undertaking!” “Even if you could make the capitol building run on renewables, you would only anger the energy companies! They’ll come after you!” But Harbuckle could not be dissuaded, and promised to veto all legislation that passed his desk until a suitable plan could be made to execute his vision. Eventually he advocated for a plan presented by a graduate student at St. Ed’s, to install the panel rig on the outside of the capitol building itself, to provide energy for the interior.
Well many locals were very pleased with this, and just as many weren’t. Some took to powering their multi-hundred-thousand dollar condos and lofts with panel rigs, some unplugged from the electrical companies altogether. Restaurants and bars began running off of renewables, and windmills were set up in Zilker Park and atop the sniper tower at UT. Meanwhile armed militia groups began stirring in the backyards of La Grange, New Braunfels, San Marcos, and Round Rock. While hipsters tweeted with eco-hash-tags, radical-fundamentalists joked in forums about using tie-die kids as target practice. Public installations became charging portals, and in eight months time the grand exterior of the Texas capitol building was glistening with reflective panels. This is when the so-called ‘eco-patriots’ decided to strike. They shot Harbuckle dead on Guadalupe St., just around the corner from the Kismet Café. There ensued a series of violent altercations with the local PD, and some federal agents who had been trailing the radical group. However, they were able to capture the Texas capitol building with only fifty soldiers. The video of their celebration from within the governor’s office quickly went viral on alt-right forums, and emboldened another militia group from Arkansas to lead a charge against the headquarters of Wal-mart in Bentonville. And, as the historians are now loathe to say, as Bentonville goes, so goes the Nation...

This story is included in D.M.’s debut collection of short fiction, Moby Pussy, published through Sybil.

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‘The Miniature Civil War’, by D.M. Rice