The White Warrior

by Marilyn Donnellan

  It was obvious it took every ounce of what remained of his self-control for Riley to keep from throwing up. He stood perfectly still until he appeared to get his stomach calmed. His face remained stone cold and not reflecting what he had to be feeling. After a few minutes of silence, he calmly reached over beside his desk and picked up his recycle bin and motioned for Kurt to dispose of the tongue.

  Riley then moved behind his desk and sat down, obviously trying to figure out what his next step should be. The vid-phone angle showed his hands shaking, but he quickly moved them under his desk.

  Juan interjected a comment, “Knowing Riley, I think he struggled to figure out how to turn the situation to his personal advantage, either that or he desperately needed a drink.”

  Riley stood up and walked back over to Kurt, asking him if this had been done by Book Liberator protesters, whether he was able to identify any leaders, and if he had anything to tell him. Kurt nodded his head to the first questions and shook it negatively for the other two. Riley asked him to write down any descriptions. Again, a negative response. Riley almost lost it when he realized Kurt couldn’t write. But the clincher was when Kurt pulled some cash out of his pocket and pantomimed Riley to give him more.

  Riley obviously didn’t need an interpreter to know Kurt wanted the remainder of the money he was promised. Riley threw back his head and laughed cruelly. ‘You think I’m going to pay you the rest of the money when you didn’t finish the job?’ he said with a sneer, ‘No way in hell. Now get out of my sight. I’m done with you. You’re fired. I never want to see your ugly face around here again.’

  But Riley suddenly changed his mind and told the guards to put Kurt in a cell for a while longer. The vid-phone showed him pulling a brick of cocaine out of his wall safe and telling two guards to stash it in Kurt’s apartment.

  And that’s where the vid-phone recording ended. Council members, exhausted by now, went their separate ways. It was several hours later when vid-news said law enforcement received an anonymous tip that a UTA security guard had his tongue cut out. But because he never learned how to write, he was unable to tell anyone who did it. City law enforcement officials went to his apartment to question him. He pulled a gun on them, so they arrested him. They told a reporter they were sure the incident was related to a drug deal gone bad since a stash of illegal drugs was found in his apartment, as well as a bundle of carefully hidden stacks of $100 bills totaling $5,000. Kurt was out on bond and awaiting trial.

  A week later, Juan found out the BL member who told his brother about the meeting disappeared. Nobody seemed to know where he was. Bryan thought maybe he went into hiding once he heard what was done to Kurt. A few weeks later, Kurt committed suicide, per the evening news.

  When Brogan heard the news, she was devastated. She was in Bryan’s apartment studying. “What have we done?” she sobbed in Bryan’s arms as she watched vid-news. “I did not want him to die! How am I going to live with this? It’s my fault he’s dead.”

  Bryan held her tight. “Honey, suicide is always a choice of the individual. We did what needed to be done for the safety of BL and our members. You know it was our only choice. And it wasn’t just your decision. We all agreed to the punishment, so let us help carry the burden, okay? Besides, Kurt made choices heading him down this path toward destruction.”

  After she cried out her grief and guilt, she finally fell into an exhausted sleep in his arms. She awakened to booms of a typical Texas thunder storm, alone in bed, with a rousing headache. She realized she was famished. She worked her way out of tangled sheets.

  “Bryan, honey?” she called, “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the kitchen,” he replied. “How about some breakfast?”

  The smell of bacon and eggs hit her, and she realized how starved she was.

  Although most people used the auto-food system to provide processed food at the touch of a button, home-cooked meals were possible with energy efficient convection stoves. They had been so busy with BL and final exams since the last BL meeting they grabbed quick meals from the auto-food processor. There had been little time to even go on a date. Any time to themselves they spent in the glow of new love and getting to know each other better. They had so much in common.

  This was their first real meal in days. And, for the first time since the assassination attempt, Brogan felt her cloud of depression lift. Now it was time to expand BL cells into other areas and save even more books. Brogan got excited as she realized thousands or even millions of books might be saved for future generations. She was not naïve enough to think it would be easy, but now with Bryan beside her she was stronger. Lost in thoughts of the future, she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around and saw Bryan on his knees in front of her, a tiny jewelry box opened in his hand.

  “Brogan Louise Finlay will you bond with me?”

  She gasped, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh yes, Bryan,” she cried, as she threw her arms around him, careful not to dislodge the lovely, sparkling ring in the box. Disengaging her arms from around his neck, Bryan gently placed the ring on her finger.

  “I know it isn’t a modern thing to give rings or even participate in a bonding ceremony, but somehow with you it seemed the right thing to do,” he said shyly. “I wanted to propose in a more romantic setting, but you looked so beautiful, all tousled from sleep I just couldn’t wait any longer. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Bryan. And the ring is perfect,” Brogan said with a huge grin. “I can’t wait to show it to everyone. I much prefer a ring to the wrist tattoos many couples get. And when can we tell our parents? I know my folks will adore you and I can’t wait to meet yours.”

  Brogan and Bryan began to plan their future together, overshadowed by the serious life’s work they had chosen, but strengthened by their love and mutual mission to save books.

  Chapter Four

  Energy Grunt at Work

  Frank wiped sweat from his brow as he stood on the sentry tower, looking over hundreds of acres of solar panels. He clicked his augmented eye-implant for distance, checking to make sure parolees were in their designated positions doing routine quality checks on thousands of panels. Each parolee wore a T-chip, so he could verify their location through the augmented feature on the implant. As he turned south, he saw his home in the distance, a few miles from Van Horn and more than 500 miles west of Austin City.

  As did his father before him, Frank supervised parolees who worked on solar farms dotting thousands of acres of barren west Texas land, land formerly covered with oil derricks. Strong muscles Frank needed for manipulating solar panels caused his denim tunic to bulge. A big man, well over six-feet tall, reserved in his mannerism, he never threatened paroled criminals assigned to his shift, yet they respected him enough to not test him.

  His thoughts turned for a moment to his daughter, Brogan, a student a UTA. She had a collection of beautiful metal toys he made for her from scraps of panels. The day after she left for university he found them still sitting in a place of honor on shelves he built for her above her bed, instead of packed away as he expected. His shared expertise in keeping solar panels always operating at their peak first sparked her interest in engineering; an interest only topped by her passion for literature and history. He was so proud of her.

  His entire life revolved around energy production for Texas Province. Small towns of 100 people or less sprang up every 100 to 200 miles on the fringes of solar and wind farms as they marched from the totally dismantled Panama Canal in the south, north to the Canadian border.

  No other province covered as much territory as Texas, with a post-war population of around 90 million. Climate change north of the former state of Texas made land too cold nine months of the year to grow crops, so the frigid land was dotted with giant wind turbines in the former states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota. Solar panels dotted the landscape in southern areas of the province: formerly
Central America, Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Their extreme heat and almost year-round daytime sun were ideal for harvesting solar energy.

  A huge national rail system transported cargo as well as gigantic turbines of stored energy from one end of the empire to the other, refueling mammoth energy turbines in every major city. Elevated rail spurs jutted out from energy fields like branches of a tree, eventually connecting to main rails running east west. Small passenger trains ran underneath solar panels elevated on rails above constantly moving energy and produce transport trains. Transport trains were powered by solar panels, while passenger trains were powered by wind energy generated by the transport trains as they whizzed below at more than 220 mph, providing an economical method of travel between provinces. The transport system was so efficient, rarely were stops for mechanically loading and unloading their cargo more than 15-20 minutes.

  The massive transportation system was built by thousands of retired military personnel after the war ended. Upon completion of the rail system, those unable to find work elsewhere often became hobos, living in hovels or culverts along the very rail system they helped to build.

  Many large population centers in the provinces were destroyed during the war. Now urban residents lived and worked in massive cities in each province. In Texas province, Austin City, the capital, had a population of more than 50 million people, half of the total population of the province. Sections of huge metropolitan areas maintained their original names but now called themselves suburbs. Austin City, with more than 500 suburbs, including the largest four of Kansas City and Dallas in the north, and San Antonio and Mexico in the south, had large sections covered with temperature adjusting domes.

  Domes no more than 25 miles in diameter and 5,000 feet tall, were usually built over craters the result of bombing from the war. Craters were cleaned out and new buildings, many of them underground, filled the space. Sometimes domes were built over underground nuclear bunkers, as in Austin, but eventually expanded to house more residents and more government offices. Domes were made from basalt fibers. Although not totally impervious to natural disasters such as tornados, they reduced weather damage significantly to habitants. Robots frequently crawled across domes, preventing cracks and major faults by constant repair efforts.

  To save energy, domes made areas livable, but not perfect. Temperatures under domes during heat cycles did not go above 95 degrees and in cold cycles did not drop below 30 degrees above zero. Anyone living outside domes was forced to adjust to temperatures ranging from 40 degrees below zero in winter to 117 degrees in the hottest times of the year. Due to unchecked climate change, violent storms often raged across the country, making life outside domes harsh and dangerous.

  Mexico City was the only area of any size in the far south section of the Texas Province. After Altero destroyed drug cartels and terrorist cells, he rebuilt old barrios and pumped millions of dollars into the city, modernizing it and assuring loyalty of citizens by giving them jobs to rebuild it. Pre-war countries of Mexico and Central America’s decimated populations of over 165 million were now less than 40 million, most citizens either working as energy grunts or living in poverty-stricken mountainous and rural areas far away from the urban areas of Mexico City. Climate change impacted these areas less than in the north.

  Residents of energy grunt towns used barter as their primary method of transacting business, distrustful of empire-run banks and using cash only if necessary to buy goods from outside their community. Like communal lifestyles of the 1960’s, their communities were totally self-sufficient. Just about anything they did not grow, build or make for themselves, they traded for with someone in a nearby town, although the government paid them minimal wages for their work. If they needed anything else, they ordered it via vid-phone and it shipped by rail. Any emergency needs were met by drone drops of supplies, weather allowing.

  Although surrounded by solar or wind power, most energy grunts avoided electronics, choosing rather to live simply and disconnected from urban cities gobbling up power they worked all their lives to produce. They avoided T-chips and I-chips. They were tough and knew how to survive in extreme temperatures in the primitive areas where they lived and worked.

  Because energy grunts rarely left the small towns where they grew up, there was little need for anything other than a basic education through high school. They learned their skills on the job and stayed until they died, eschewing age-defying drugs.

  Frank knew he and Emily, his partner, were an exception: college educated energy grunts. They met at a dance held at a grange hall in Ft. Stockton in 2095 when they came home from their universities on holiday. They bonded six months later, after their graduations. Frank studied engineering at University of Texas Dallas, but moved back to Van Horn after graduation, preferring rural to urban life. Emily was the sole school teacher in town, a graduate of University of Texas Austin. She chose to make Frank’s last name her own.

  Frank built their house from metal scraps he salvaged from solar panels, kept warm and cool by the same solar energy powering much of the empire. Brogan was born in 2097, ten years after the war ended. The one child rule meant she was cherished by her parents, although they were careful to not over-indulge or spoil her. Population was curtailed to conserve resources, and life-enhancing drugs caused people to live productive lives for over 200 years.

  Criminals from urban areas, once tried and convicted, were disbursed among hundreds of prison energy farms in Texas Province, or to prisoner-only produce farms in Chicago Province. As criminals completed their sentences, they paroled for life to other farms, with more violent prisoners sterilized and implanted with B-chips.

  Frank shuddered as he considered the impact B-chips had on parolees he saw every day. Almost zombie-like, they responded to instructions but appeared to be totally without emotions. They worked long, back-breaking hours in extreme temperatures and never questioned or protested. He knew some supervisors worked parolees to the physical breaking point just to meet energy quotas. But he just couldn’t do that to a fellow human being. It bothered him he hadn’t yet found a way to protest the empire’s use of B-chips. Was he a coward or just being prudent?

  As Frank stood on the sentry tower, he shifted his thoughts away from the uncomfortable topic and let them wander back to his daughter’s early years.

  Brogan learned to read at a very young age. He saw she was enchanted by the way squiggly lines transformed to mean words she understood. He remembered the day she told her parents how much she loved the way her mind pictures became reality when she wrote them down. She absorbed information like a sponge, easily completing lessons in her mother’s one-room school house before everyone else her age. She read and re-read every book she found, including a worn Bible always sitting on an end table in the living room. Her favorite was an old book her grandmother gave her by an ancient poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson. She especially loved books on history. Maybe the specific memory came to him because of their last conversation on the vid phone.

  “Mom, Dad, UTA is requiring students to turn in all books to the incinerator because of the law banning books. I can’t talk more about it right now, but we’ll discuss it when I come home for the next holiday. By the way, you’ve met Bryan via vid-phone. I am head over heels in love with him. Now I want to bring him home, so we can be bonded there.”

  Frank and Emily were not sure about Bryan, having not met him in person, but if she loved him, they would trust her judgment. They knew about the Book Liberators. Brogan had hardly talked about anything else her last visit home. The prime minister’s edict was having a huge impact on energy grunts. Libraries were shut down and books burned by the thousands. Since no one knew which books the empire approved of and which ones they didn’t, every book in libraries being closed was burned just to stay on the empire’s good side.

  But thanks to the incredibly hard work of the BL council in the past year, membership grew into the thousands across all four provinces, beginning with UT students
who quickly spread the word among their families and friends. Protests occurred daily while BL cell members secretly stole thousands of books right from under the noses of unsuspecting empire officials.

  BL cells were now more formally organized, better trained and much, much more cautious than before the assassination attempt on Brogan’s life last year. It was a wakeup call to not only the council, but also to members. The seriousness and danger of their mission was no longer theoretical.

  But Frank was worried because the work of BL had become extremely dangerous for everyone involved. Brogan told them about the assassination attempt and what followed. She said after the security guard committed suicide, and university security forces were unable to identify the protest movement’s leadership, the prime minister was notified. Riley sent a request to the prime minister’s law enforcement office for authorization to expand the university’s efforts to stop protests.

  With the prime minister’s okay, a task force was authorized to coordinate efforts across all four provinces. Riley was promoted to Major and appointed head of the empire’s task force. He stopped drinking and was given free rein to stop protests by whatever means possible. The purpose of the task force was to find leaders of the protest movement and terrify members enough to shut them down permanently. The major called the task force, “Operation Close the Book,” or OCB. His soldiers, composed of former military personnel, spread out across the empire, looking for protesters.

  In his arrogance, Riley believed the presence of his soldiers was enough to terrorize citizens into giving up books and betraying BL members. But he and the empire failed to understand how fiercely individuals valued their books, their freedom to choose what they read, who they worshiped, and how much they cherished freedom of thought.