Global Ledger
May 31, 2440
By Javier Ruiz, Business Column
Matthew Marmaduke is not on the ballot in any country. You cannot vote him out, you cannot recall him, and, short of an unlikely planetary consensus, you are not going to evict a million V’ren refugees from Missouri.
You can, however, hit his balance sheet.
For all the myth around the man, two very human things still anchor his power on Earth, freight and media. Strip away the titles and the memes and you get a logistics empire that moves food and parts across half a continent, and a media apparatus that shapes what people watch, share, and argue about.
If you are furious that the High Lord went on camera and told you your local problems are “not his to fix,” these are the only levers most of the world has.
Start with freight. Marmaduke’s roads, rails, and depots are woven into everyday life from the Central Plains to the coasts. The toll corridors, the just in time warehouses, the discreet “Freehold partner” stamps on everything from fertilizer to phone parts, they are not abstract. When your grocer stays stocked through a flood season, chances are a Marmaduke route was involved.
That is exactly why anger will be tempted to aim there. Union leaders are already asking whether they should renew contracts with Freehold linked carriers. City councils are quietly discussing whether to delay new concessions. Consumer advocates talk about “ethical shipping,” a phrase that did not exist last year.
There is a second target, the media machine that helped build his persona in the first place. Streaming archives, news channels, youth programming, much of it still carries the DNA of Marmaduke Media even if the ownership is now folded into the family trust. If you want to send a message, you can cancel a subscription, refuse a syndication deal, pull your school off a curriculum package that came with a Freehold seal.
None of this is as satisfying as shouting at a camera. It is not meant to be. It is the slow, grinding pressure that business actually feels. Lost freight contracts mean idled trucks and shuttles. Pulled media deals mean fewer export markets for Missouri content.
There are catches. Boycotting his roads means your food and medicine may arrive later, if at all. Pulling out of his media ecosystem means your local producers need alternatives in a market still recovering from the Plague era collapse. You do not punish a power like this without punishing yourself a little too.
That is the uncomfortable truth at the center of this story. The world wanted a savior, and instead it got a contractor with boundaries. Marmaduke told us plainly that he will not fix what we are unwilling to fix ourselves. Rage at that if you like, but do not pretend he hid the terms.
If people truly want to take their frustration out on him, they should stop expecting miracles at a microphone and start treating him like what he is, the chief executive of two enormous, very mortal businesses.
You deal with executives through contracts, through renewals, through where you send your freight and whose content you choose to carry.
You may never get to vote on the High Lord. You vote on his empire every time you decide which road your goods travel on, and which channel you tune in.
