by Rik Thompson
There was descension within the ranks of the general population and many groups and organizations would try to tear at the fabric of thought and effort of this new world government. ……Keith Senne Historian
· * * *
After work each day she went to Timothy’s apartment. She always had a feeling that he would be there, they could talk, arrive at some conclusion what course to take, and it was each day after work that she made this trip. She would knock on the door, ring the bell, and if none of those methods worked, she would pull out the key Tim gave her and open the door. She turned the key, heard the click of the lock as it released and opened the door. The apartment was empty still, and even though she felt he would not be there she still had to go through the ritual each and every day.
She walked to the bedroom and peeked in to find that it was just as it was yesterday. She heard a noise as it echoed through the house.
Was it the front door?
She started for the front door pretentiously, reached the living room quietly, and saw two men standing just inside the door, in the entryway.
She opened the door not knowing what to expect, and one of them took out his trifold black wallet, flipped it open to display a badge which read Population Control Board. The man with the displayed wallet spoke, "Shirley McAllister, you are under arrest for violation of Section Five of The World Health Organization's Birth Right Law. You have the right to an attorney before litigation, and noted that anything you say here may be used in a court of law against you.
"Timothy Wade, is he here?"
"No."
She was stunned, her body tense, frozen and she thought she may never say another word for as long as she lived, her knees felt like they buckle as the two men pulled her with difficulty out to a white van in the parking lot. They opened the back door of the van and escorted into a seat in the rear of the van, buckled her in securely and closed the van door.
"Let's go back to the apartment. I want to see for my own eyes that the Wade character is not there."
Shirley heard the voices fade as the men moved away from the van and toward the apartment. She sat rigid for a moment then, the need to escape came over her. She began to kick at the glass on the back of the van door, her heels making a clack, clack, clack on the back-van window.
"That is not doing anything for me whatsoever," she said as she pulled off her high heels and began to beat on the glass with all the fury of a mad woman and in this fit of pure rage, the glass seemed like it gave and then cracked, she kept on pounding and with another good wallop the glass gave, a gluey mix of small fragments that set there until she gave it a push and it began to fall to the outside of the van, and she heard it crackle as it collided onto the steel bumper to finally sprinkle on the pavement. She felt fortunate that the van had one big door, and not two because there was one large window which ran the width of the single back door, and it was quite easy to climb out of.
Hurried and wasting no time at all she exited the back window. She ran in her pantyhose, barefoot across the park lot. She motored onto South Sunset Avenue, veered around an apartment complex across the street, against a red light, and spying a Yellow Cab on the opposite corner that was just dispensing passengers she darted over and threw herself into the front seat. It took the driver by surprise and he eyed the woman suspiciously.
" Hey lady, where are your shoes?"
"Hmmm, I knew I forgot something," she smiled coyly.
The cabbie relaxed, smiled, "Where to?"
"I'm not too sure just now. Please, just drive."
The two men returned to the van, immediately noticed the broken glass scattered over the parking space behind the van, and entered into a quick investigative mode.
"Look at that," one said to the other as they returned to the van, "I never thought in a million years this would happen."
"Let's get on the radio, call the office and see if this woman was chipped at birth," the other shadow replied.
She led the cab driver down West Covina Parkway, and instructed the driver to take a right at West Service Avenue, then, a little way down the road ... "Take a left here," she said as the cabbie followed directions onto South Broadmoor Avenue. The avenue dead-ended at a cul-de-sac.
"Where to now?"
"I'll get out here," she said as she gave the driver a ten, "This is good for me."
"Don't you want your change?"
There was no time for things like that as she was already into too much change now, she was gone, running through a housing area, barefoot, trying to look down as she ran to avoid rocks, painful when she mis stepped awkwardly. She slowed her progress to a walk and looked around to the left, to the right for her next option. Across the way she noticed some people gathered in the front yard of a residence and started over to where the people were gathered.
She felt the wet liquid of her perspiration running down her clothes, clothes that were quite disheveled as she approached the crowd of people, she tried to smooth her hair, and wipe the sweat off her face; straightening her attire as she walked toward the crowd.
"Excuse me, I am terribly sorry to intrude ..."
"That's quite all right, young lady," an older man with balding salt and pepper hair replied. "We were just going into the house to have a meeting. Would you like to join us?"
"What kind of meeting?" she asked.
"Please, come on in and see."
She glanced at the man dubiously at first, wasn't sure if she wanted to follow the people into the house, but felt it a better outcome than being found by the Population Control Board. She acknowledged the older man with a nod and followed the group of people into the house.
· * * *
Timothy Wade hurried toward his office and thought back - fifteen minutes ago he was stepping down from the command module - now he would get to his office and see Shirley, and what was happening about a baby, if there was one to begin with.
Shirley was not there, and in the next hour of his preliminary search, was nowhere to be found in his world.
“Where in the hell?”
It was much like some gong smashing inside him, like a ton of bricks had fallen on him. She was pregnant – it was against the law. He stood there in his office quietly contemplating where she could have gone and why she disappeared. How could he find her without drawing attention to himself?
And was he a part of it already?
He left the office, impatiently, already programming himself for his talk with Shirley, a talk he had thought about, even out there in space, and like a pre-recorded message on the radio, he would explain his viewpoint, but still it had once again entered his mind, perhaps to re-energize his thoughts once more to define them more vividly, to bring them once again to the forefront. He hurriedly made his way and minutes later he was in his car pulling out of the park lot. In the passage of the next two weeks he began to withdraw from everything. He realized there were meetings to attend to at work; designs to review, and decisions to be made. He was no longer into it. He knew if he was to show up at work there would be questions – questions of her and he, he did not want to elaborate, confess or deny. No, at the present he thought about what was most important; he would get this right with her – not answering obtuse, irrelevance – right now he did not want any part of it.
· * * *
As she entered what might be the family room she noticed rows of chairs had been placed in the room around the tan sectional making its place in the middle of the room, so she took a seat in one of the metal, fold-up chairs and as she gathered into the chair, she noticed a banner above the fireplace which read, Transformers. The meeting was getting underway; she quarantined her thoughts and kept a closed mouth. An elderly man took to the podium, over by the large bay window, beside the fireplace, in a voice that seemed to crackle at times, he began to speak.
"I would like to welcome you all to our meeting today. I know most of the faces here, but for those I don't, let's take a few minutes and get acquainted.”
/>
There were five new faces at the meeting and as the new faces began to introduce themselves, the introduction moved to Shirley. She stood up, reticently, cautiously, and started to speak, shook all over and began to cry. Tom Anders, the old man left the podium clicked-clack and rushed over to Shirley and embraced her and held her in a warm embrace.
"There now, there's nothing to be afraid of here. You are among friends."
Shirley worked at drying her eyes, let the redness slowly dissolve, pick herself up, straighten up, somewhat. She began to talk to the old man, Tom Anders, seriously, hurriedly, tell him the story and the dilemma she was caught up in.
"The Population Control Board is hunting me down. They had me locked up in a van, and I escaped, and ..."
"That's okay, Miss. Tell you what, let's go in the back where we can talk," Tom Anders said as he motioned for the second in command of the meeting to take over. They traveled together, Tom with his arm around Shirley's shoulder, strolling, as they entered the kitchen, the old man helped her to a seat at a wooden dining table and took a seat right across from her and when they were both seated, and asked, "Are you pregnant?"
She tried to calm down, "Yes, and Tim and I have broken the law and now they're ...”
"I see where this is going. A birth grant was out of the picture, at this point.
"All this happened so fast, one minute I was going to find out about a birth grant, and the next minute I was being hunted down like an animal. How could all this be possible?"
"They find out, they have their ways, and although we don’t understand them all, they are there none-the-less." he replied. "Did you apply for a birth grant?"
"No, I went to the building to get the specifics of one, and ... "
"And you were already pregnant?"
"Yes, but I didn't tell them I was."
"No need to, they scanned you as soon as you entered the building."
Shirley began to calm down a little. She now knew, with his explanation that they found out she had a fetus, one growing inside her minute by minute - those panels in the hallway, near the entrance - through those panels.
"Now, listen to me very carefully. They will eventually get to you, no matter what you do."
"But how will they do that?"
"You were chipped shortly after birth, young lady, and as long as you have that in your foot, they will be able to find you instantly, and if you were already captured by them, they are most likely on their way over here right now. We have to move fast.”
As Tom Anders, along with an assistant prepared Shirley for the removal of her chip, Tom explained his organization to Shirley.
The name, Transformers, said it all, and they stood for tyranny against the global government. They were an organization whose main objective was to right the wrong of birth grants which prohibited economically unfeasible people from having offspring, and they would do anything in their power to reverse the decision made by the government to halt this decision.
Tom Anders, with the help of one other administered a local anesthetic to her left foot, and using a small scalpel Tom made a slight incision and there about a thirty-second of an inch embedded in her foot he removed the one eighth length chip which was blinking erratically.
"Here we are," he said as he held the blinking chip up to Shirley, "this is how they find people and know exactly where anyone is at any given time."
Tom placed the chip on a table, "But this one will not find you any longer."
He took a hammer and struck the chip, there was a crunching sound as the force of the hammer shattered the tiny chip and the tiny lights went out.
Los Angeles Population Control Board
Several technicians and field agents stared at the main monitor screen. For the most part this arm of the PCB had not seen many cases of birth grant violations; the McAllister woman was a first and the central focus of this branch. The Hispanic population, although historically making up the majority of the citizenry in and around the Los Angeles area, followed through on the law and maintained strict adherence.
Sylvie Robers joined the group and gazed up at the empty monitor which up to five minutes before had displayed the exact whereabouts of Shirley McAllister.
"What's happened to the monitoring screen?" she asked one of the techs she was standing next to.
"Nothing, it is a fault in the receptors in the chip. It looks as if it has been terminated. We tested the technology on our end, and it is working flawlessly."
· * * *
Shirley shivered as she hurried from the South Broadmoor Transformer gathering, whose charter, or mission statement was to completely dismantle the Los Angeles branch of the Population Control Board.
She needed to collect her thoughts, everything was moving too fast, spiraling out of control and as she moved through the rear of the cul-de-sac, she kept to the south side of West Covina Parkway. Up ahead she spotted a small cafe and started in that direction then halted abruptly when she remembered that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She walked past the cafe a couple more blocks and located a thrift store. She entered the building and began searching for a pair of shoes among the racks of used women's shoes, as she browsed the shoes, she recalled a time in her young life when she had been destitute and downright nasty looking as she was now.
"Can I help you?" a voice sounded directly behind her.
She turned to face the store employee, "Why yes, I would like to find a size five, wide. Where would that be?"
The attendant's expression seemed agitated, like she did not want to be there; having to disrupt her casual day to assist a shoeless woman. She regarded Shirley for a moment, "We don't sort or inventory our lady’s shoes here," she said in a matter of fact way. “You will just have to search."
SEVEN
The World Population Control Council convened and re-convened, but none of the laws, or by-laws were added or taken away from ......Keith Senne
BBC News
"Good evening, this is Sybil Janes reporting, for BBC News,” the attractive black-haired beauty, with the black horn-rimmed glasses said. “The World Population Control Council convened today, in Geneva, where representatives from the Transformers argued that world population figures over the past few years have rapidly declined due to restrictions placed upon it by the World Population Control Council. William Trowel, speaking for the Transformers; stated, and I quote: 'We have a world that at the present has been set up, in privilege, only for the rich to foster children. Countries that are in a developmental state have had barely five percent growth in the last few years, which will have a long-term effect on these countries down the road.'
"Siegfried Martinow, spokesperson for the WPCC, offered up this rebuttal ..."
"Let's take a minute to ask ourselves this question concerning the right of everyone to give birth regardless of the circumstances, to procreate. And the question is, do we desire to return to the beginning of the century where juvenile crime destroyed families, dashed our hopes and dreams for a better world and sent our unplanned youth unto a course of untold violence, even into their adult lives? I know as of yet it is not the perfect world, but isn't it comforting to know now that our children are planned for, loved, and provided a place to fit into today's society?
"Friends, judging from the records that have been kept since the invention and establishment of the infant analysis system, a success rate of seventy-eight percent has been benchmarked for citizen assimilation in the world society. That said, do we really want to return to the sixty-five percent juvenile crime rate that we had not too long ago? Do we really?"
The council adjourned late this afternoon after further arguments from both sides of the aisle without adding or subtracting from the current charter.
· * * *
Shirley stopped to take a breath, try as hard as she could she could not figure, nor believe the past few hours of different circumstance; much different right now then she had ever had to face in all her life – this new complex envi
ronment she found herself in was imperative that she survive. Suddenly she felt non-human, in a harsh world filled with a climate of inhumane world and culture. Gone was her structured environment of an excellent job, plush office, a well-organized, and comfortable apartment. Instead she was at a Transformers’ safe house where she would enter into a world of email. She would work in a clandestine atmosphere, and send out emails of Transformer propaganda and further the organization’s influence on the world stage of who has and who has not the right to procreate and to birth babies and raise children.
She was sitting on her new bunk, a single, soft and back breaking futon type rig, like the ones at the local Wal-Mart.
"You're new here?" someone behind her said.
She twisted around to see a natural brunette, turned blond-haired woman looking quizzically at her.
"Oh, hello," she replied trying to look and sound interested, and cheerful, "you startled me. How are you?" she asked.
"How did you get here?" the woman asked, "Was it by court order, or what?"
She studied the woman for a moment, curtailing a laugh welling up inside her. She realized that she needed one massive do-over to get those horrid dark roots covered up, and she could use a bit of make-up as she seemed to have tracks where it used to be.
"... by the grace of God, she replied with a slight smile.
"Huh?" the ditzy woman asked, more to herself it seemed, then anyone else, in a confused tone.
"Just an expression, kidding; I was referred here by one of the elders."
"That's good. That's really good. I was referred here by the WPCB."
"Really?"
"Yes, they thought it would be best because I have been diagnosed with raging hormones, she said as she threw up her hands to make fleshly quotation marks.
Shirley smiled a smile that had: I bet you do, written all over it.