John Wray: Status Report

of the country is shut down for the pandemic. Work when the border barrier actually accelerated. In June, Trump visited a section of the wall in Yuma, Arizona. Is the most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world. It's got technology that but he would even believe. Trump has promised more than five hundred miles of border wall by early next year, but the reality only about the three miles of new barrier where none previously existed have

been built by the Trump administration so far. The things that Trump was imagining about what the wall should look like and what features it should have were just so bad, shit crazy. That's John Ray, the author of five novels, and he's talking about news reports of Trump's most outlandish ideas for the wall. It was kind of like he was already in the realm of science fiction before the first dollar was spent on this project. Whatever we think of Trump's wall, it's going to be around for years

to come. If Trump wins the election, it may even get fully built. For this story, John Ray tries to answer the question what will the wall be like in thirty or forty years? The barrier doesn't think in terms of years, not in any conventional sense, but sufficient weather systems have traveled its length, doing their utmost to compromise its integrity that the barrier is conscious on a structural

elemental level of having passed its prime. Evidence abounds the barrier steel and zinc alloy ballards, once so gracefully crenelated so subtly iridescent in the blazing midday sun, are pock marked and rust streaked and crumpled. Its angled concrete fundament, made due to budgetary and environmental concerns from locally quarried trap rock, is fractured and eroded, and its six inch electrified spikes have lost both their grace and their alternating current,

to say nothing of their effectiveness at puncturing human flesh. Migrants, military personnel, traders, smugglers, small children, and beasts transgress the barrier with impunity at certain key junctures. Margallis, Sonoyta, virtually the entire state of Texas, there is no longer any

barrier to speak of. One year ago, a bespectacled young man, apparently some kind of student, approached the barrier without the least sign of fear or trepidation, just outside develop Paso and edge the following verses into its rust encrusted pediment with a Swiss army knife. My name is Ozamandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, e mighty and despair. That was a low point, no question about it, a

fresh humiliation to add to all the others. But in spite of such cruelties, in spite of humanity's glaringly obvious indifference to its plight, the barrier refuses to give in to despair. When things are at their worst, when morale is at its lowest, it has only to consider the trench. The trench, by any standard, is a thing of savage beauty. The years have wrought changes upon it as well, perhaps to a greater degree than on any of the barrier's

other feature. But these changes have themselves been things of wonder, contrary to what the naysayers and the skeptics not to mention the Army Corps of Engineers argued when the trench was first proposed, It has not lost its water to evaporation, nor has its channel become clogged with falling rock or

displaced earth. Not even the most passionate of the pro barrier advocates have thus far managed to explain this, in defiance of all reason of all since the trench indoors, and that is by no means all of the seven hundred sixty breeding pairs of American alligators imported at considerable public expense from Lake Okeechobee in twenty twenty seven, hundred

fifty eight died of hunger within the first month. The remaining two pairs, however, have gone on to populate an astonishingly extensive expanse of the brackish, oily, oxygen starred canal system with their scaly progeny. Though contact with the human population, as admittedly dwindled over the years, dwindled in fact to the point that the barrier sometimes questions its own raison dtre. The alligators have more than made up for the absence

of people. The alligators have given the barrier an altogether more beautiful, more reasonable, or justifiable purpose. In a word, they give the barrier a reason to exist. If only the same thing could be said about the snakes. That was status report by John Ray. The narrator was Eduardo Ballerini. Hi. John, Actually,

I'm good. So when you read the news late last year that Trump had privately talked about fortifying a border with a water filled trench stocked with snakes or alligators, which prompted AIDS to seek a cost estimate, where did your mind go and know that that was what was

happening in your reality? You know, the frustrating thing a lot of the times with fiction, as you think, oh my god, this is such an amazing story, but you have that reaction that a lot of fiction writers have, which is like, I could never put that in a novel. I could never put that in a story because everybody would be like, come on, please, you know, But in this case, it's like you can write fiction that actually has that cool aspect of nonfiction, which is no stupid

and crazy as this seems. Check the article in the Times. You know, so, all I had to do is basically take the given facts of the story and just extended by another thirty six years or however many years that was the story. Who So, construction on the real border barrier has continued even during the pandemic. Yeah, what do

you think the wall means to Trump? But also to America? Basically, for Trump after he makes a very public declaration, the vast majority of these declarations, he's never called out on the wall though, was so central to his campaign and was kind of like one of his first big symbols. He can't just totally bail on it. And it's an ongoing project that, of course, in theory, would take many, many years to complete. So I think it's become a

kind of private nightmare for him. It was never financially feasible. It was certainly never going to actually do what it was supposed to do. You've lived most of your life in the US, but now you're chatting from Mexico City. That's right where you've been living on and off for the past couple of years. How has living on the other side of the border changed your view of the wall. No one talks about the wall in Mexico. No one

takes it seriously. It's just not one of the topics that people debate very fiercely, even when they're debating US Mexican relations. What is very much on the radar, though, is the relationship between the Mexican president, the current Mexican government, and Trump. And the enormous resources that Trump is insisting on the Mexican government diverting towards the border to keep migrants from crossing. The wall is kind of completely redundant.

It's just completely beside the point. But in many other ways, Trump really is successfully bullying the Mexican government into doing his bidding as far as immigration is concerned. It's a bummer. Do the people who you speak to their think he'll be reelected. I think the people that I've spoken to here sadly have less optimism about the coming election than most Americans I've spoken to, and I would say less optimism than I do. They've been through so many disappointments

that they really just don't expect very much of us. Ashley. You know, the occasional glimmer of rational thought and maybe voting in our best interests. I mean, that's enough to surprise them. They would be delighted if Trump got voted out. But what's interesting also is that they don't necessarily see Trumps as the sum total of the problem. I mean, there's been bias against Mexico and misinformation about immigration since

well before Trump got a lot. Absolutely, the sad truth is that Obama is pretty harsh with his deportations as well, and phil Obama never mind about you know, the Bush administration. So they would be delighted to see Trump go, but they wouldn't expect everything to just be be lovely and equitable overnight, and neither should we know, John Ray, thank you so much for coming on Chronicles of Now, Ashley.

It was a delight thanks for having me. You can read my full interview with John Ray on our website Chronicles dot Fm, where you can also read the story you just heard and other short fiction torn from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw, our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is Emily Rostick. Tyler Cabot is the executive producer and founder of Chronicles of Now. For Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Letal Malad.

Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening. So we need to get this out of the way. Several years ago, I spent a few weeks living in your basement as I was covering from a torn acl wait wait wait, wait, wait, stop, turn off the mic. I remember that I don't think I was home. I wasn't. I wasn't at my house at the time, but I remember, I remember this, this scenario