Distraction, Bruce Sterling

Near future Earth and a new cold war is in full swing - the Dutch Cold War. The US is a shadow of its former self and in hock to Europe, its infrastructure falling apart at the seams and with nomadic tribes roaming from state to state living according to no one's rules but their own. Oscar and his krewe are on newly elected Senator Bambakias's campaign bus making their way home to Washington when they are halted on the Texas/Louisiana border. It is the beginning of a new life for the Senator's campaign manager. He finds himself one on one with Govenor Green Huey who wants to turn Louisiana into the centre of the USA, making a political move on the Nobel Prize winning Greta - a scientist at the one facility that all factions within US politics see as a prime gambling chip - only to fall in love with her, and suddenly after maneouvring for power on the behalf of others, National Science Council advisor to President Two Feathers. But Oscar will always be moving according to his own agenda, because unlike those he works for he is truly non-affiliated - he has no tribe, nomad or Hispanic, because he was genetically engineered over the border in Mexico. Though Oscar doesn't suspect it, meeting him, loving him, gives Greta the key to making America great again, the biggest scientific breakthrough that man might ever make.