“And now that we caught you – did you really think we would not find out who took our hard drive? – you are about to betray your friends to save your own skin. So why should I believe anything you say?”
“I’m telling you the truth, everything I know! I’m cooperating!”
“We will see, will we not? And you have been in the building long enough to know what happens to enemies of the state who do not repent, correct? You do repent, right, Jacob?”
“Yes,” Jacob replied softly. “Yes.”
“And you have given up your silly religion too, right? Because the state can’t allow dual loyalty. You are either obedient to your magical sky god or to the very real People’s Republic of North America. You cannot be obedient to both.”
“I will obey the People’s Republic,” Jacob said, lower lip quivering, tears in his eyes.
Rios-Parkinson smiles. “See, there you are. That was not so hard. You have a new god now. Can you feel its spirit?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good. Now get him out of here.” The goons dragged Wiseman away.
Rios-Parkinson pushed the button on his intercom.
“Find Larsen and send him in.” He leaned back in his chair and savored the feeling. The material rewards of his position were welcome after so many years of scraping by as an aspiring agitator and academic. The erotic rewards of Amanda and countless others before her were delightful, especially after his near-monastic first thirty years of life. But the power, the ability to take another human being and crush him, to force him through pure terror to renounce everything he loved, was the greatest reward of all.
And he could do that to nearly anyone he wanted at any time he wanted, with just a few exceptions. But someday, there would be no exceptions, no limit on his power. And all of the People’s Republic would look to him and be afraid.
He sighed. Soon.
Larsen, his operations chief, entered the office after a sharp knock and a barked order to “Come.”
“Any indication of internet transmission?” asked Rios-Parkinson.
“No, sir.”
“We do not say ‘sir’ here in the People’s Republic, Deputy. You know this. Your time in the patriarchal military of the former USA was long ago. I expect you to grow and adapt. Am I understood?”
“Of course, Director,” Larsen said. “We’re devoting all of our assets to monitoring for the alert software signal should they attach it to the internet. If they do, we will immediately remotely block it and locate its physical connection.”
“Good. And?”
“Director, we have not reacquired them yet,” he said, anticipating his boss’s question.
“Then make sure you do when they try to approach Amanda,” he replied, mildly annoyed.
“That’s our plan. We have agents around the campus and in her classes. At 10:00 a.m. she has an institutional racism lecture. At 11:30 a.m. she has her self-criticism seminar. We’ll cover her at lunch, but that might be difficult since she usually eats by the plaza, and there is a mandatory rape culture protest for all freshpeople, so we’ll need to be close to her in case they try to use that to cover their approach.”
“Do not let her see our surveillance.”
“I’ve made that very clear to the agents. Most of them will appear to be students. I briefed them myself this morning – they smell very convincing.”
“What about the afternoon?”
“She has her United States Crimes lecture then a People’s Chemistry lab.”
“Will you be able to cover her in the laboratory?”
Larsen shook his head. “It’s a lecture class. They don’t do actual chemistry experiments because hands-on work privileges….” Larsen paused, uncomfortable. “I’m not actually sure who it privileges, but someone, so in the lab class the professor talks about how science is intersectional with issues of gender, race and class.”
“You just ensure that when they find her you are watching, and you do not lose them once you do. They are going to lead me to my hard drive.”
Larsen nodded. “But sir,” he said, unsure how to broach the issue. “What if she refuses to go with them?”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’ again, Deputy.”
“I apologize. It’s hard to rid myself of my unconscious sexism,” said Larsen. Rios-Parkinson raised an eye brow.
“And…racism too.” Rios-Parkinson nodded, then went on.
“Well, obviously I expect her to refuse to go with them and to report them,” Rios-Parkinson said. “When she does, you follow them. But she may feign cooperation to draw them deeper, so be ready to track them if she does. She is extremely loyal to the People.”
“Of course,” Larsen replied. “Of course she is.”
“And when we take them after they obtain the disc, my own tactical team executes the assault. Everyone else mans – I mean peoples – the perimeter and stays back. Are we clear?”
Larsen was well-aware of the sensitivity of the lost hard drive, and equally well-aware of the precarious nature of his own position should the rising star to which he had hitched his career falter. “Very clear. I have a ten-man team ready. I mean ten-person team. Although all the persons are men.”
13.
Westwood was thriving, with stores, restaurants and coffee shops hopping with student business from the campus of UCLA that lay just to the north. To the west was the former veteran’s cemetery, recently built over with new apartments, then the 405 freeway. A wall along the east side of the elevated highway ensured one could not simply pull over to the shoulder and jump down into the sector. If you did not go through a gate past security’s scrutiny, you were not coming in.
Those who came in every day, enduring the long lines and the grumbling guards, were easy to distinguish from the residents. Those living inside the sector were different than other people because they smiled; their apparel was fresh, their shoes not falling to pieces. Those who came in to work, to tend to and cater to their betters, were decked out in drab, worn clothing, at least for the short time that they were walking to their jobs – none of them could bring in cars, even if they had cars and could have found and afforded the gasoline.
A few years before, when the contrast between those from inside and outside of the various special sectors throughout the country became simply too embarrassing to ignore, the People’s Republic imposed a new rule. Uniforms. Upon their arrival at work inside a security sector, the workers would change into a unisex costume of black work shoes, denim pants and light blue work shirts. On their chest, above their left shirt pocket, they would wear a name tag that identified their place of employment. In their pocket they would have, at all times and upon pain of arrest, their identification card showing that they had permission to be inside.
“Imagine being a blue shirt. You come in here every day, work like a dog, see all this, then stand in line for three hours to buy food before you go home to a house with no electricity,” Turnbull said.
“Yay, socialism,” Junior replied, watching a blue shirt step off into the wet gutter to get out of the path of a half-dozen smiling, laughing students.
Turnbull eased the Lexus through the crowded streets, looking for a place to park. Students, the children of the wealthy and connected, wandered along the sidewalks, oblivious to blue shirts manning the kiosks, fetching their lattes, sweeping up the litter the students casually dropped on the ground.
“They seem to have it pretty good in here,” Junior observed.
“Some of them do,” Turnbull said. He hit the brakes – traffic had suddenly come to a halt in front of him.
“What is it?” Junior asked.
The answer came not from Turnbull but in the form of shouts and yelling, clanging and whistles. Up ahead, at the next intersection, past the Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, they could make out what appeared to be a parade heading east to west in the middle of the street. There were at least 100 people, some carrying signs, a few manipulating giant puppets that bore a passing rese
mblance to notable officials of the United States. And they were chanting:
“Racism, sexism, we say no! The USA has got to go!”
A middle aged man with a bullhorn and a man-bun walked along at the side of the column, adding his own input:
“Stop rape culture! Silence equals death! We demand liberation from corporate tyranny!”
To the right of the Lexus, in an Apple store, a trio of students took a moment to look up from their iPhone 16s and glance at the passing protesters. Then they looked back down and continued with their feverish pecking.
As the protestors trudged on, a few uniformed PBI officers looked over, disinterested. They made no move to clear the road.
“I think this is a scheduled protest,” Turnbull said. “Every time I’m here, just like clockwork, there’s a bunch of these idiots walking down that street with their signs and puppets.”
“Planned spontaneity?”
“That’s the best kind. Let the kids and the radicals blow off a little steam every day and maybe they don’t try to actually upset the apple cart.”
The passing parade had moved off to the west and traffic was moving again. There was a parking structure to their right and Turnbull pulled in. A sign proudly announced that there was no charge to park, parking fees being, apparently, racist and imperialist. They found a racism and imperialism-free parking space on the second floor.
“Interesting how fighting racism and all the other -isms always seems to require measures that make things better for rich people,” Turnbull said as he exited the Lexus, being careful to keep the driver’s door from scratching the Tesla parked beside them. A power cord ran from the Tesla to the outlet on the wall, and the indicator indicated it was charging. There were no brownouts in the special sectors.
They headed out to the street, blending in with the served caste rather than the serving class, their faces down, both in dark glasses. They passed a pair of PBI thugs hassling a Latino man wearing a worker’s uniform, demanding his papers; the conflict drew not even a glance from anyone else. Turnbull relaxed a bit after a few steps. His plan, had they been stopped, formed instantly and unconsciously. It was to punch the first one in the throat, draw, kill the other with two shots to the forehead, and then put two hollow points more into the face of the one struggling to breath.
The campus began where the shops and restaurants stopped – there was no signage demarcating the campus from the community. There was only a sign pointing toward the Hillary Clinton Medical Center – as a kid, Turnbull had gotten stitches there back when it was named after Ronald Reagan. Below the sign was a bank of newspaper racks. The Los Angeles Times, which cost seven dollars and was printed on 8.5” x 11” newsprint, had a headline which read “PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC SETS NEW RECORDS FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE.” A second above-the-fold article was titled “GOVERNMENT RELUCTANTLY AGREES TO PEOPLE’S DEMAND FOR UNPOSITIVE RATION ADJUSTMENTS IN SOLIDARITY WITH OPPRESSED PERSONS.”
In the next box was the UCLA student paper, The Daily Entity. It had been The Daily Bruin until a few years before when a student from Marin County, who claimed to be part Cherokee, demanded that the name be changed because bears were sacred to his people. The new symbol of UCLA was a circle; the original smiling bear had been changed to a stick figure human, but despite its lack of sex-specific characteristics it was deemed too “cispatriarchal,” so the symbol morphed into what was essentially a happy face. Then there were objections to that image by the visually impaired community, because it had eyes, and by protesters against “facial normativity” who passionately argued that the presence of a nose and mouth “disempowered and invalidated” the deformed. The present circle had its critics too; the student government was scheduled to discuss eliminating the mascot altogether. UCLA’s new mascot was likely to be, literally, nothing.
The Entity’s headline chronicled the latest defeat for the UCLA Entities basketball team; a photo showed the wheelchair-bound center forward going for the ball against her 380 pound gender indeterminate opponent. The headline read “ALL PEOPLE ARE VICTORIOUS WITH INCLUSIVE SPORTS!” Reading further down, one would find the final score was 6-9 in favor of the Stanford Reproductive Freedoms.
Perhaps fifty yards beyond inside the campus was a bronze statue of a smiling man, his right hand raised in greeting, with a plaque reading “People’s Hero Barack Obama – ‘No Justice, No Peace’.” It was unclear whether this was honoring him for his presidency or his work as the United Nations Secretary General, which in some quarters was widely hailed as a smashing success despite the numerous acts of war and terrorism, economic disruption, and the Splitting apart of the United States that occurred during his tenure. Before fraternities were banned, one caused outrage by sticking a nine iron in his hand as a prank. Those not arrested for this hate crime were either expelled or forced into extensive reeducation to root out their manifest racism.
Past the statue in a small plaza was another protest, though “protest” might not be the correct word for the gathering of a couple dozen students and, clearly, nonstudents, in a drum circle. A tattered banner read “Drumming for Soldarity with the Peoples of Color of the People’s Republic.” There was no “i” in the word “Solidarity.” If any of the students walking by during the banner’s long lifetime had paid the protestors any mind at all, one might have noted the error.
Another speaker just a few steps beyond standing on a box outside an administration building, shouting demands that the government “stomp out the racists and deniers and the wreckers who refuse to support the People’s Republic!”
“Aren’t protestors supposed to actually protest against the status quo?” whispered Junior. That’s how it had worked at college back home.
“I don’t think the authorities would take real well to actual protests. They prefer a festival of acclimation. Oh, wait, there’s some actual protesting,” Turnbull said. “Look over there. The shaved headed women with piercings.”
“Which ones?” asked Junior, confused. “The ones in overalls?”
“No, the other ones, the ones in old timey bathing suits. See their signs? They’re protesting the rape culture here at UCLA. I assume that’s allowed by the authorities to make sure the university stays in line. Can’t let alternate power centers develop.”
“Okay, I’m already sick of this place. So how do we find my sister? Let’s get her and get out of here.”
“According to Jacob’s schedule, she’s in class right now about halfway across campus,” Turnbull replied, looking at his watch. “We can get her as she leaves. Assuming she doesn’t freak out when she sees you.”
“She won’t.”
“No, maybe she won’t. But I’d feel better if she knew we were coming,” Turnbull said, and then stopped and looked at Junior. “Do you think she knows we are coming?”
“What? We haven’t even tried to contact her.”
“I know. That would have been too dangerous. They could have intercepted the message. Then we could have been made by the PBI. Except, we were made by the PBI.”
“You sure they were after us and not trying to quell the riot?”
“I don’t know. But I felt like we were being watched the minute we left David’s, and then the bad guys show up at the food center. But since then, nothing.”
“You think we’re being followed now?”
“I don’t feel it, but…come on, in here,” Turnbull said, pulling Junior with him into a classroom building.
The central hallway was light and airy – blue-clad janitors were sweeping up while oblivious students passed them as if the workers were invisible. To the right were three doors, each opening into a large lecture hall. The nearest one was wide open. From inside, a high, bored voice intoned, “In people’s math, we ignore the racial and privileged freight that comes with so-called numbers, and reach for a deeper narrative of class, gender, and girth issues that it gives rise to. Two plus two is not four. It’s oppression.”
There was a muffled quest
ion, then the first voice responded: “Yes, that will be on the final. Which is open book, open notes, and a collective effort.”
Turnbull and Junior huddled under a stairwell, away from the passing students, next to a garbage can and six differently denominated recycling containers. A hand scrawled poster on the wall next to them from something called the “Ear Justice Conspiracy” warned that “Speaking Is Hearist!”
“Think about it,” Turnbull said. “They follow us from David’s but they don’t grab us. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“They want something else more than they want us.”
“The hard drive?”
“Has to be.”
“They must know we don’t have it.”
“They must know we don’t have it yet.”
“If they know about the damn hard drive and about us then they know what we’re after here. It’s gotta be somebody in David’s group.”
“That Jacob guy.”
“Yeah, the guy who told us where to find Amanda.”
“Oh shit,” said Junior. “We gotta warn David.”
“No, they’ll be listening for that. We try to call him and they’ll know their plan is blown. They’ll bust right in, grab David and try to beat out of him where the hard drive is.”
“So what do we do here? They gotta be watching Amanda for when we show up to get her.”
“Yeah,” said Turnbull. “That’s how they reacquire us. They watch her until we come and get her, and then we lead them to the hard drive.”
“And then they take us.”
“Yeah,” said Turnbull. “But that leaves a question about Amanda unanswered. Now, they have to know that we can’t really drag her kicking and screaming out of a crowded campus if she doesn’t want to come. So either she knows what’s up and pretends to go with us willingly, or they haven’t told her shit because they think she’ll go with us willingly.”
“Told you she would come with us,” said Junior proudly.
“Yeah, unless she’s setting us up.”
“That wouldn’t happen.”
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