by Derek Maine
May 1, 2026
Dear Leader says we will be taking over Cuba. “Almost immediately,” he promises. New wars spawn.
May 2, 2026
I have a new method to quit smoking. Charles told me about it. He said every time you want a cigarette you eat one. It’s supposed to disgust you and yet you still taste the tobacco, the leaves get stuck in your teeth. I have been shitting filters for weeks.
May 5, 2026
Iran breaks the ceasefire, attacking the UAE with drones and missile fire for the second straight day. The Iranian foreign minister is in Beijing meeting with his counterpart. The United States’ official opinion is the ceasefire is still holding up. I spent two days in the Lowcountry smoking cigarettes outside of munitions plants and a coating supply manufacturer trying (not very well, or hardly at all) to interview the workers. All expenses paid reconnaissance trip courtesy of Farewell Transmission. I told my editor I needed to get my hands around the means of production, specially volume. Were these guys working overtime? Have production orders changed? Have the bosses been by more, or less? A writer should spend more time with their feet on the pavement, getting the local flavor. You could learn a lot, and fill ¾ of a monthly column, from the munitions factory workers.
I was too chickenshit to talk to any of them coming or going and was eventually asked to leave by a parking lot security worker. I had taken too many of the wrong drugs at a highly inconvenient part of the day and I paid the price. I couldn’t unclench my jaw to ask a blue collar man what fucking time it was, forget about production schedules! When the rent-a-cop walked up to me I suddenly snapped out of it and ordered a Paloma. I said, “I stubbed my toe on my cigarette,” and he asked me if he needed to call the police or an ambulance. I said “neither officer, I’m no trouble.” I wanted to tell him I was from the papers but I wisely did not. I could tell he didn’t like being called officer, and thought I was being facetious. I was not. He had a gun and a uniform and I was wearing Balmain shorts and had two packs of nicotine gum and a notebook. Everything looked like an authority figure to me. He said he would like to not see me the rest of the day so he can get back inside. I said ‘sir, it’s seventy-two degrees and not a cloud in the sky in Charleston, South Carolina, why would you want to spend it inside?’ But I only said it inside my head as I was walking off the lot. I was unable to secure an interview with a worker at the munitions factory. But not for lack of thinking it was probably a good idea, driving eight hours round trip in a thirty-six hour window, and standing there.
The Chairman of War will not say whether or not America has kamikaze dolphins, but can confirm Iran does not.
May 7, 2026
The Americans and Iranians are firing on each other in the Strait of Hormuz this late hour.
How could a ceasefire hold in these unceasing times? Nothing ceases. Everything happens all at once constantly in our time.
I am going to see Bill Callahan with the courier on Tuesday at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, North Carolina.
Charles told me tonight, outside underneath the lamppost (halos of smoke, moonlight), about a man he ran into some weeks ago, an old buddy, a Marine, Middle East combat veteran, American hero, and the man, (whose name I never got) used to have a wife and kids and a big, pretty house in the suburbs until Covid came along. When Covid came along this man started going out at night and walking up and down creeks behind neighborhoods watching women get undressed and middle-aged couples fuck through their windows. When Covid came he got active again. He was a sniper. He thrived at night. Old instincts, fresh desires. He had his favorites. On the night he was caught, half of his legs in the creek, bitten red by chiggers as usual, a husband shot him in the shoulder with buckshot. His wife left him. His kids found out. It was a pretty small town, Iowa somewhere. So he walked around the country, stayed some places for a while and had a mangled shoulder and kind, misty blue eyes.
May 9, 2026
The school in Iran that was double tapped on the first day of the war was the result of an Anthropic (Claude) agent embedded within Maven, America’s “Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team,” using ten year old data and the American military glanced at the output and approved without any additional research or even a second layer of confirmation.
May 18, 2026
We are delaying tomorrow’s scheduled attack on Iran at the request of Middle Eastern leaders, Dear Leader says. An incredibly obnoxious, obvious political era we are witness to. I blame television. I blame other people. I blame each other. I blame myself. It was probably always going to end up exactly this stupid, how else could it be?
On to more important things. I prattle too much. Editors cannot handle me. I’m too much meat, no bone. I have the beginnings of a plan. See, well, first of all, here’s the situation. I need to finish my novel. I know, I know, this is the absolute worst literary device and has the insufferable quality of being true to boot but this is who I am.
I have the edits. I have started working through them. In the meantime, I will write a monthly war column and gain readers and interest, and perhaps an ambitious publisher will see the vision, and then think maybe he’s not too old and lazy and living too stupidly to seduce a few readers still.
The war I cover is the Ukrainian war or that was the war I was hired to cover, I thought, and did cover and still do too but then, of course, Israel, and America. Iran kicked our asses, they will try to tell you different. I wrote it in real time which is the only time I got and you can go back and check my notes, and while you’re at it check my credentials, would you please? I report on wars, for a living, from a motel (where I pay a monthly rate now), at the very outskirt of a mid-Atlantic capital city, I am still the wartime author.
The plan is I stole a rolling cart desk from one of the office services temp jobs Carol put me in and now, with a proper desk, I can finish the novel. I have not used it yet, or touched it. It’s been here a week, I bet.
Two Iranian oil tankers made port in China during Dear Leader’s arrival. President Ji had his way with him. Russia and America are struggling, China rising.
Ukraine’s drone strategy has turned the war somewhat in their favor. The superpowers are being tested. All wounds, self-inflicted.
May 22, 2026
Dear Leader has turned Airforce One around, unable to attend his son’s wedding. Iranian airspace has been closed. The Director of National Intelligence resigned. It is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and I am hiding out at the Crystal Coast.
The courier supplied me with hashish before I departed. My headlights are busted so I can only travel in daylight hours. An awful case of indigestion from the nicotine lozenges, I must take up smoking immediately to defeat it. I came here to fish and edit my novel. I ate dinner alone inside my car in the parking lot of a putt-putt course. The world is opening up to me, and I can sense the intervention of the divine.
May 23, 2026
The hashish empties me out, and I spend the evening splayed out alone, buck naked, catching occasional glimpses of waxing gibbous between mostly stuck clouds. I traveled with sheaths of paper, large binder clipped, Caran d’Ache Ecridor, orange highlighter, index tabs and a clipboard. I am meant to be finishing my edits and finishing my novel. Everything seems so imminent and obvious on nights like this. The whole of it all washes over me and I am glad for it. To lay in the sand stoned is enough. War will always be there. War is happening. We live in wartimes. I cannot count every second.
Dear Leader announces the strait of Hormuz will be opened, a deal ‘largely negotiated.’
May 25, 2026
The encyclical letter is being read aloud at a makeshift Mass on the beach this Memorial Day.
May 26, 2026
Moscow is under attack. The war I was first hired to follow is heating up, and in starkly surprising ways from when I last left it (involuntary). Ukraine is attacking Moscow, a city that has not been touched by enemy fire since World War II. The United States prepares to capitulate to a militant, murderous extremist regime and create a new middle power in the Middle East in the short to medium term. I can see the end of the month coming, and wonder what I have gotten down. Likely not much. My novel is unedited. I have several excuses. None of them are convincing. My ex-wife is in Baltimore, and I do not think I will see her for a good, long while. This time wasn’t as bad as the last (and no charges were filed), but we’ve got nothing but practice leaving each other. I am back in my room at the King’s Motel. I booked a two night stay in Pittsboro, a cabin in the woods not far from the King’s Motel, for the 7th and 8th of June to finish the job.
I predict China makes a move on Taiwan while Dear Leader is still in office, likely around the midterms when America is in the thick of the roil.
My stay on the Crystal Coast was excellent. I read The Information by Martin Amis, seeking clues, and avoided my own thoughts. I turned the safety on. The wars did seem to heat up during my stay in the sun. It all came through me like electricity if electricity was Valium instead. I rustled around my papers and did not open them or make a mark. Is this dereliction of duty? Duty to myself, perhaps. The wars go on regardless.
The yield on the thirty year note is at 5.2% mostly on account of energy prices, the highest level since right before the financial crisis in 2007.
Keep the powder dry. Preserve and protect.
May 27, 2026
I write by mouthfeel, I refuse to fear large language models taking my job as war correspondent for Farewell Transmission.
More strikes against Iran. This is not peacetime. Superpowers rarely take defeats well, and tend to multiply their damages seeking Pyrrhic victories to sell to unwashed masses. I am back in the office buildings, shuffling papers for Carol at my latest temp assignment. I have no one to blame but myself. It’s my country, my war, my ex-wife, Carol’s sadism (a re-insurance company, Carol?!?, really?), my legion of nonreaders, the games on our phone, this dumb century, artificial everything, microplastics, and SSRI’s in the water supply. No one to blame but myself.
May 29, 2026
The Chairman of the Department of War assures select uniformed U.S. service members may be allowed to attend the upcoming UFC match on the White House lawn provided they meet the Department’s standard waist-to-height ratio of 0.55.
Derek Maine writes about the war for Farewell Transmission.