by R E Kearney
“Yeah, I saw that. Is that normal?”
“This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen the SS come in and drag somebody away who is returning from SPEA,” the flight attendant tells Robert as he passes and heads down the steps.
Dragging his bag behind, Robert climbs the steps into the terminal building on his trip to customs. Behind him, fat Platte Pat squeals loudly about being forced to climb the steps because the elevator is out of order. Robert walks faster hoping to put as much distance between her and him as possible. Even though nearly jogging, he cannot help but notice how shabby and dilapidated the terminal appears. It is not just filthy. It is visibly decaying. He trips over a loose piece of duct tape that holds two pieces of frayed carpet together. He fails to notice the duct tape in the dusky concourse. Above him, only a few of the overhead lights burn brightly, other overhead lights flicker faintly, while many are burned out.
Robert remembers how impressed he was by this gateway to America when he last walked through Dulles. Less than a decade ago, Dulles was a proud symbol of the progress and power of the US. Dulles still symbolizes the US, but now it signifies its decline and putrefaction under Abaddon and his Conservative cronies. As he walks past one armed SS Usher after another, he also realizes how the airport embodies America’s increasing paranoia. Every SS stares at him and fingers their pistol.
Finally, Robert reaches Customs. In large fading and chipped letters In God We Trust is painted above the Customs kiosks. A woman in an SS uniform accepts his passport. She carefully compares his face and his passport image. “Are you Christian? Do you accept Jesus as your savior?”
“Uh…well yes, I guess,” Robert replies with surprise.
“How long do you plan to stay in the United States Mister Goodfellow?” Are you here for business or pleasure?” To Robert’s relief, the agent asks him some questions he expects.
“I’m here for business and I think only for two days,” Robert guesses.
The SS Customs agent returns his passport, “God bless you and have a blessed day.”
After retrieving his bag, Robert walks toward the airport exit, unsure of his next move. He wanders toward the car rental area when a fellow brushes past him hurrying toward the baggage claim area carrying a sign with his name on it.
“I’m Robert Goodfellow!” Robert shouts at the man.
“Oh good,” the man with the sign slides to a halt. “I was afraid that I missed you. There was a massive, food-shortage protest blocking highway 267. Third protest this week. All those people moving around in the street really messes with the mind of driverless cars. It just stopped and wouldn’t move until they cleared the protestors.”
“So the protest is over? Protestors are gone?” Robert asks as he joins the man walking at a trot through the airport’s lower level.
“Well, I expect that it’s over for today, but they’ll probably be back tomorrow. They protest somewhere every day now,” the man chuckles as he chatters. “Seems they’re not enjoying the trickle down from Abaddon’s resurrection of Supply Side trickle-down Economics on top of him chasing out all of the businesses. More than thirty percent unemployment leaves a lot of homeless, hungry families wandering aimlessly through the streets with nothing to do but protest. Lots of people living in the streets these days. Lots of hungry people.”
“In Canada, we define your trickle-down Economics as a rich, white man pissing off his mansion’s balcony onto the head of the working man below. Eventually, the rich man’s piss trickles down from the working man’s head to his feet making him wet and stinking. Of course now the rich, white man feels good, because he’s had a relieving piss. But, as usual, the working man has just been pissed on and feels pissed off.”
Chuckling, the man suddenly halts and extends his hand, before returning to his constant chatter, “I’m Alfred, by the way. Alfred Newman. I am a SPEA embassy liaison. Just a part-time gig worker. I wish I was a citizen. I want to be a citizen, but I don’t have the education or skills for SPEA.”
Robert is surprised by his unexpected confession. “Oh, that’s too bad. I’m not a SPEA citizen either.” He attempts to console Alfred. “Why don’t you return to school?”
As they approach the exit door, Alfred hands Robert a small oxygen mask. “You will probably need this since you aren’t used to our polluted air here. Since Abaddon implemented the Carbon Rules that reopened the coal power plants, killed the EPA and repealed its regulations, we just keep getting smokier.”
Robert’s eyes immediately sting and begin watering as they exit the terminal. He dons his mask.
Alfred signals for his unmarked SPEA car to return from the waiting lot. “Anyway going back to school really won’t help. SPEA isn’t making any Americans into citizens now. The Ambassador says Americans can’t be trusted. If we didn’t leave the US eight years ago, then President Gutefrau says we’re all too brain washed and too corrupted to benefit SPEA.”
A driverless, electric car silently maneuvers between two waiting taxis and parks itself next to Robert and Alfred. Anger floods the faces of the two taxi drivers standing next to their old, empty cars. One bulky man takes a threatening step toward them.
“You’ll want to hurry Mister Goodfellow. Taxi drivers can get violent. Driverless cars and rideshare services drove most of these guys out of business,” Alfred urges nervously.
The passenger side door automatically opens. After helping Robert toss his bags into the back, Alfred motions for Robert to take a seat. “You’re on your own now. You should arrive at the embassy within the hour. Well, that is if nobody commits suicide in front of you during the next hour anyway.”
“What!” Robert backs away from the car.
“Oh, it happens all the time now. Don’t let it bother you.” Alfred again nervously motions for Robert to get into the car. “At least once or twice a day somebody throws themselves into traffic on the Capital Beltway or the Custis Memorial Beltway. Since Abaddon’s take-over, the suicide rate, the divorce rate and the domestic abuse rates have all skyrocketed. No hope for the future anymore, I guess. No work. No money. No life. No reason to live. Anyway, if they don’t land on a car or they don’t cause a car crash then they just haul off the body and you’re on your way. It’s no big thing. Happens all the time. Just didn’t want you to be too surprised.”
Shaken, Robert slides into his seat. “Well thanks for the warning. I guess.”
“Well you’re not in Canada anymore, my friend.” Alfred closes the car’s door. “Welcome to Hell. Welcome to our live, living Hell. And you are welcome to it.”
Chapter 9.
Under Surveillance - US
Robert’s car maneuvers itself through the airport traffic and onto Highway 267, the Dulles Access Road. Similar to the Dulles runways, the access road is pitted by potholes, ruts and cracks. Trash swirls in the highway median and along the shoulders. Here and there a derelict vehicle sits abandoned. Enveloping it all is a grayish, stinking haze.
At each mile post his car passes a billboard advertises, Big Rewards. Report un-American or non-Christian Activity. Like vultures in the sky above him, Robert watches flocks of drones circling and encircling his car. He studies them closely, wondering who is operating these spy eyes in the sky. As Minister Wilson had told him, “When you are in the US you are constantly under surveillance. Indeed, US means under surveillance. Eyes and spies are everywhere.”
Where Dulles Access Road passes over Leesburg Pike, Alfred’s warning about suicides proves true. Half a mile ahead, Robert notices a rusty, battered pick-up truck broken down next to the guard rail of the overpass. Smoke rises from the truck’s open hood. As his car nears the dead truck, a young man steps out from its front. The man shakes his fist toward the truck, turns, walks to the bridge railing and jumps over it. A few seconds later, Robert hears a crash below followed by squealing brakes. His driverless car never slows as it passes the burning truck. Neither do two other vehicles near him. He wonders as he pa
sses, if they did not see the man jump or if they just do not care. A police drone arrives and hovers on-station above the abandoned and, now, blazing truck.
Just west of the Potomac River, Robert’s car parks itself on the shoulder of the highway to allow a convoy of transports bearing Society Security markings and hauling advanced Robotic weapons to pass. As they roar into DC toward the White House and Capitol, he recognizes the weapons as the type he and the Cyber Defense Group controlled during the Nordic War. During the Nordic War the Cyber Defense Group named these weapons Chariots of Fire, because of their powerful lasers. They are sophisticated, mind-controlled, semi-autonomous, lethal, laser weapons capable of pin point targeting if operated correctly by trained ASDs such as Jay Hawk and Pion. But, having fought battles employing Chariots of Fire, Robert also knows that these same weapons can also lay waste to a block of buildings and kill hundreds of people in seconds if that is desired or erroneously programmed into them. He witnessed the obliteration of an entire Latvian town resulting from one moment of mental inattention. Only highly trained and extremely disciplined minds capable of intense focus can successfully operate these mind controlled super-weapons.
As the Chariots of Fire pass, he wonders. Who, if anybody, in the SS is trained or capable of effectively operating this highly technical and complicated equipment? And why is the SS controlling the weapons and not the US military. Obviously, Minister Wilson spoke accurately concerning Abaddon’s distrust of the US military. The SS forces are operating as if they are as afraid of their own US military as of the Russians. So are the SS rushing to defend against a Russian assault or a US military coup? Perhaps both, Robert decides.
After the SS convoy passes, Robert’s car crosses the Alexandria Aqueduct into the District of Columbia. He breathes a sigh of relief when he departs the highway and Alfred’s highway suicides zone. But Alfred did not warn him about the growing number of Sist families living in vehicles, tents and shacks along the Capital Crescent Trail next to Canal Road Northwest. Signs declaring, Lost Job to Robot hang from several of the vehicles.
Cluttering the ground around the Sists’ vehicles, tents and shacks, he notices piles of trash, small tree limbs and other debris. Muddy puddles of water stagnate in low spots through-out the camp. Evidently, the Potomac floods them so regularly that they no longer bother to remove the debris and rubbish. Despite the science-deniers preaching that it will never happen, rising river waters are slowly gnawing away Washington D.C.’s edges. The Sists squatters’ villages do not end along the Capital Crescent Trail, but swell into Foundry Branch Valley Park, as well.
At the intersection where Foxhall Road Northwest meets Reservoir Road Northwest and Salem Lane Northwest, Robert realizes that driverless cars have a critical weakness. They cannot anticipate criminal human actions. As his car enters the intersection, a woman throws herself into the rider’s side of the car in front of him and then drops to the pavement screaming painfully. His car halts immediately while simultaneously transmitting signals alerting local police. From his left, two men pointing pistols run toward the driver ahead. In seconds, the driver scrambles from his car and scurries toward a nearby neighborhood. One of the gunmen shoots twice at the driver, who tumbles onto the sidewalk. Swinging their pistols around the intersection, while shouting threats to kill anybody who interferes, the two men and the woman clamber into the car. Moments later, the carjacking has been committed and the car is gone.
The street clears and Robert’s car rolls through the intersection, as do all other vehicles. Again, no human-driven or driverless vehicles stop. Human drivers look away from the man squirming and bleeding on the concrete. Nobody appears to care. Or does nobody react because they fear the authorities more than the criminals? Robert wonders if any of the drones hovering above the intersection or an intersection camera recorded the incident. But, do the police care more than the public? He doubts it. Centuries before Aristotle taught that poverty is the parent of revolution and crime, and it is no truer than today, Robert thinks.
As he enters the residential neighborhood surrounding Foxhall Road Northwest, Robert begins seeing crippled panhandlers holding signs saying, ‘Homeless Nordic War Veteran’. Many of the houses lining the street are empty, faded and decaying. In front of one abandoned house, a man, a woman and three small children in tattered, dirty clothing squat on the cracked, weedy sidewalk behind a large piece of dirty cardboard declaring that they are a Homeless Hungry Christian Family. Everywhere the signs and stench of desperation assault him.
Finally, Robert’s car exits Foxhall Road and turns onto the SPEA Embassy compound street. At the intersection of Foxhall Road Northwest and the Embassy’s street, two rotund protestors overflowing well-worn lawn chairs shake hand-written signs at him with the message Bring Back Our Jobs on them. Both men wear holstered revolvers buried in their bulging bellies. But, Robert does not fear them shooting him. Their fat folds envelope the top of their holsters obstructing access to their weapons. Robert imagines that they will gut themselves before they can shoot him.
The two men shake their signs, but do not budge from their maximally stressed lawn chairs. Exerting all of his strength, one man tosses a half-empty container of a chemically caffeine charged and sweetened beverage against the side of Robert’s car. The container bounces off the car’s door and springs back toward its thrower, clattering and rolling into a pile of fast food bags, wrappers and more containers surrounding their feet. White trash.
Across the street from the protestors an old, rusting car is parked within its own encircling litter and trash. Brown tobacco spit-stains dribble down its doors. Above its rear windows, on metal coat hangers duct taped between the window glass and roof, flutter tattered and filthy Confederate flags.
As his car nears it, Robert notices two men sitting in the front seat of the parked car. He assumes they are some of the many unemployed who receive extra benefits for conducting unofficial surveillance - basically, intimidation. He also wonders who is watching who. Are they watching the protestors or him or both?
He promptly learns they are watching him when they roll their car into the street blocking him. The man on the rider’s side lowers his window and points a pistol at Robert.
“Show me some identification!” Rider-man shouts and then spews a brown stream of spittle toward Robert’s car. Most of his spit splatters against the top of his own window and onto his tightly-stretched, filthy, sleeveless T-shirt.
Robert lowers the car’s windshield, activates his passport and extends it.
The man squints and leans forward. “Why are you here?”
“Business!” Robert responds.
An intense discussion erupts between the two men and continues for several minutes. His patience gone, Robert taps the car’s horn. Rider-man jerks and irritably shakes his pistol. Leaning past his partner, the driver photographs Robert using an outdated digital camera. After waiting several more minutes, the two men slowly back their car out of the street and wave for him to proceed. They keep their eyes glued to Robert as he passes. He presumes they are endeavoring to intimidate him. They fail.
A twelve foot high barrier wall and security gate block the Embassy compound street. His car stops in front of the Embassy’s security gate. Two robotic security scanners shaped like huge Cs slide around his car mechanically peering above, below, behind, in front and through his car for anything and everything which should not be inside Robert or the car. Their search complete, the security scanners slide backward and the Embassy gate opens.
Once within the compound’s barrier walls, Robert discovers the SPEA philosophy of total, self-contained autonomy, complete self-sufficiency, and independent sovereignty designed and constructed into every corner of its Embassy. Initially, he notices solar panels and wind generators built into the building’s roof and walls. Above the compound, he spies WASP security drones continuously circling. On the ground, four DOGs roll around the compound’s perimeter. A robotic, electric lawnmower s
lowly trims the grass next to the Embassy building. A car similar to the one delivering Robert waits in a small parking lot in front of the building. There are no humans visible.
The car stops and Robert’s door opens with a hiss. Noticing the smog has lifted and the air is clear, he slips off his oxygen mask and sucks in a deep breath. As soon as he steps out of the car, a security guard robot approaches him. The head of the robot elevates to Robert’s height. “Look into the facial recognition, retinal scanner sir,” the security guard robot directs.
“Welcome Robert Goodfellow. Please follow me.” The robot proceeds toward the Embassy building’s blast proof door. As the robot nears the building, the door slowly slides open and allows them to enter. Robert steps inside and the door closes behind him. He scans the room and sees no humans. But, he does see a humanoid female robot standing behind a table, which startles him for a moment. Standing behind the table is a robotic-humanoid Dame Gutefrau.
“Hello Mister Goodfellow. May I serve you a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, or a cup of cocoa?” the Gutefrau-bot offers in a computerized facsimile of Gutefrau’s voice.
“Coffee? Oh, I’d love some coffee. I haven’t had real coffee for years. Of course, some tea or cocoa will also be good. If you have it?” Robert answers excitedly.
“Of course we have coffee,” a man with a South African accent declares from behind Robert. “Supplying the world’s best coffee, tea and chocolate is SPEA’s claim to fame and why we are thriving.”
Robert spins around to see a tall, thin Black man walking toward him following a self-propelled table of food and three, liquid containers. The man is covered from throat to toe in a felt, energy-generating suit. Beside the man, a robot transports a similar suit.
“Hello Robert. I am Ambassador Kwari Freeman.” Freeman and the table pause in front of Robert. “Here you must try these biscuits with your coffee or tea or chocolate. We just printed them using some new recipes we received from the capital this morning. I know you haven’t eaten for six hours so you must be hungry. I believe you will find them quite tasty and they are high in protein. Please try some.”