Instead, she took it to its opposite conclusion. I won’t let this define me, she thought as she lay there shivering. I won’t let that one jerk dictate my choices. He can’t make me hate. He can’t make me withdraw my compassion.
She mentally composed a message to send to Cobalt the next day:
Let them all out. Even SuperMax. Ninety percent of SuperMax prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for years on end, and I won’t leave them there to rot. And please make sure this letter gets to every single prisoner we let out:
*
Dear newly free human being:
You’ve caught a ride with the Robin Hood Thief, courtesy of Cobalt. As you know by now, Cobalt also wiped out your record and gave you a new start. You’re welcome.
Now, don’t you commit any more damn crimes.
I don’t know you from Adam. I don’t know what you’ve done or why. I don’t know what you might be capable of. I do know that your life has been hard and you haven’t been able to make a regular life work up til now. But I don’t care. You’re getting a new start now and you will make the most of it. You owe it to me and Cobalt, you understand?
If you’ve committed violent crimes unprovoked, just because you’re angry or hurting or troubled in some way, then for the love of God, get some help. I can’t do everything in the time I have left, but I have funded a lot of money into drug addiction and mental health charities. Go to one of them. Do the best you can to get better.
Just remember this. I was about fairness. I was about love. I was about making the world a better place as best I could in the time I had. I never hurt anyone if I could help it. If you like what I’m doing for you and for your country, then do me the honor of living the same way.
Do all the good you can in the time you have. Damn it.
Love, the Robin Hood Thief
7 Days
Helen came home in the early hours of the morning, when Mandy would surely be asleep. She spent the next day, Saturday, at home in bed, recovering and hiding from the world. She watched pointless videos and played games on her e-paper and let Jessie sleep on her bed, which he wasn’t usually allowed to do. She tried to pretend it was a normal, lazy Saturday as it would have been forty days ago.
But she also found an article from LSTV dated from Friday, written by Christian Smith: “Robin Hood Thief’s Squatters Likely to Stick.”
… the city's lawyers have informed the city council that they have to respect the law surrounding adverse possession and let the new residents stay put for the time being.
According to Orlando Law School’s Professor of Criminal Law Stephen Dupree, each house whose ownership is now in dispute thanks to the actions of the Robin Hood Thief will have to be handled in a separate legal proceeding, and each proceeding normally takes five to ten years.
However, experts suspect that these particular cases could take up to twice as long, given the number of them that will hit the dockets here in Florida in the coming weeks, and their unusual complexity.
"Failing the admission of any evidence to prove ownership by another party, if the house has been abandoned for a period of time such that eyewitnesses such as neighbors cannot attest to the owner’s identity, the current residents have to be considered plausible owners by the courts," said Professor Dupree.
"Essentially, while these residents do necessarily not have the legal right to be in these homes, they cannot be evicted until the cases are completed to prove that that’s the case,” Professor Dupree stated.
“And by law, if the proceedings take too long—and the exact length of time varies by statute—the current residents gain permanent title to the property,” he went on to say.
It's being called an unprecedented redistribution of wealth, even considering its geographically limited scope.
Susan Orsley, a resident of the Pine Peaks area, said, “There was a homeless family that lived on my street by the corner store. Just right out in the open, basically, in a bunch of boxes and a bunch of shopping carts and bags for all their stuff. There were three little kids in that family. All of them skinny, scrawny, sad-looking kids. The day everything happened, on my way home, I saw they were packing everything up. The father said his brother claimed a house for them and they were all moving in. They looked so happy I just about bawled.”
A source who requested anonymity said, “My sister and I were living in a sleep locker with our mother. She’s in her nineties now. We were all getting sick from the mold in the mattress. Well, my sister’s boyfriend got us into a house. Mom’s already doing just a thousand times better. We didn’t even realize how bad it was for her until we got her out of it. I just have to say thank you, Robin Hood Thief. We are so grateful for what you did for us.”
5 Days, 16 Hours
Cobalt and his posse worked nonstop for three more days. Helen wished she could help, but it was all out of her hands now, because she had no skills to lend to this effort. Three more days just brought her three days closer to death.
Occasional messages from Cobalt told Helen of their progress—and lack of it. The job felt touch-and-go all along. Hacking Flyte turned out to be a surprising challenge that required more and more of Cobalt’s resources. Their point of contact within the Department of Justice fell through, then another one turned up only hours later. On Saturday night, Cobalt thought the job might not work at all, and then, on Sunday night, he reported that it was a go for the following afternoon—but not for all of the prisons.
The nearly five thousand facilities used a variety of security systems. About forty percent of them relied on the same security software and systems vendor, another twenty-five percent relied on a different one, and the remaining thirty-five percent used a smattering of smaller vendors. Cobalt and his posse were only able to hack into the first vendor’s systems.
For well over half of the prisons, then, the doors would not open.
She didn’t know what the Department of Justice would do when they realized they held prisoners with no record of wrongdoing. Would they be forced, legally, to let them out?
Either way, a lot of prisons would open.
It just didn’t feel like enough.
Cobalt also confirmed that vast swaths of Orlando’s real property records had been permanently destroyed in the bank job, plus all of the servers and backups of one of the banks. It was a small fraction of what they’d hoped for, but it was something.
It still didn’t feel like enough.
Monday morning, the waking hallucinations had Helen trapped in an ice cavern. When she regained consciousness, she knew why. The house was freezing. Helen staggered to the thermostat with her blanket wrapped around her and saw that the temperature was literally below freezing. A polar vortex had hit.
As it did yearly now, given the changes to the Earth’s climate, the cold over what remained of the polar ice caps had pushed southward and brought winter into summer. When she went outside, tiny drifts of snow lay on her car’s windshield wipers.
It was a bad day, with a lot of trembling and muscle spasms and weakness that forced Helen to pull over twice because she couldn’t be sure she was staying in her lane. But not long after, she leaned against Old Blue at a safe distance from a minimum-security prison on the outskirts of greater Orlando.
From her vantage point out at the highway, everything looked normal. Guards in their long coats stood at the guardhouses with rifles. Three cars sat in the visitors’ parking lot.
Helen shifted her weight to her one good leg, shivering even with her jacket on. She hoped that the evacuation, as she was starting to think of it, would go smoothly.
Her newest burner e-paper made a noise. She checked for messages.
[ Locked out baby. And requests sent to Flyte ten minits ago. Doors opening in tn more. Pllus my posse came up with an awesum idea. Were adding in fake garbled records for like thousands of rich people so that they cant even tell who had a record to start with and who didnt. ]
Helen grinned and sent back a
thumbs-up.
Her stomach did a little flip of excitement and anxiety as she turned back to the prison. She couldn’t wait to see the prisoners coming out.
If the doors opened. And if the prisoners didn’t get shot.
Time passed with agonizing slowness. She felt colder with every passing moment.
Would the world understand? Would they remain behind her, especially when—inevitably—many of these criminals committed new crimes? She couldn’t help what the escaped felons would do, no matter how impassioned her plea in her letter.
Speaking of the letter, it was time.
She sent LSTV a message with her e-paper. It was very similar to the letter she’d given to all the prisoners, except that it was directed to the general public. She was confident the news media would give it air time. The Robin Hood Thief was in the very midst of her fifteen minutes of fame.
A few weeks from now, no doubt, something else would have taken over the proverbial airwaves.
Ah. Whatsit had another anonymous message for her. [ Hey, Robin Hood Thief. You won’t be a free woman for much longer. You know why? You know what you did wrong? You forgot that with enough money, nothing is impossible. And I have plenty of money. Your time is almost up. ]
No shit, she wanted to tell her cyberstalker.
There. The first cars coming down the highway. Flyte cars.
There was a line of them. She counted as they came into view. Five, six, seven… ten, twelve… twenty. And still more coming.
Sirens sounded from the prison, then were abruptly cut off. From her vantage point by the highway, she saw the guards stiffen and touch their weapons.
Her heart jolted in her body. She crossed her fingers.
The announcement crossed the flatlands almost as if no space intervened. It was the script Helen had sent over, piped over the loudspeakers by Cobalt. The script was a lie through and through, but a necessary one.
She listened with interest, hoping to know what Cobalt’s voice sounded like, but it was a computer-generated ultra-masculine voice.
“Correction officers, the cell doors have been opened by order of the governor of Florida. You are hereby ordered by the state of Florida to facilitate an emergency evacuation of these prisoners. For your safety and for the safety of the inmates, please allow them safe evacuation in the Flyte vehicles that have been provided. Offenders, please evacuate to the Flyte vehicles in an orderly fashion. This message will now repeat.”
The guards fingered their weapons and stared out in confusion.
Flyte cars were lining up just outside the outer-most doors of the prison.
Guards waved at each other, shouting, baffled and confused.
There. The doors swung open. The first prisoners came out slowly, looking around with wide eyes, uncertain. Then they saw the waiting cars and began to run.
Twenty, forty, fifty, sixty of them.
The first wave made it to the cars.
A crack of a rifle. One man fell just outside the doors. The others swerved and went around him, running even faster, panic visible in the flailing of their arms.
Another gunshot. Then another. Three people down.
Helen cursed and kicked at the air. “No! No shooting, dammit!”
Another gunshot. Another. Five people down. Helen cried out, helpless.
The guard responsible for shooting got shouted down by another man. Judging by body posture, the shouter was the superior.
She couldn’t breathe.
The first cars began to pull away with their passengers.
Moments passed. No more gunshots. The flood of prisoners dwindled, then stopped.
The guards checked on the fallen offenders. Prison medical personnel came out to put them on stretchers.
The guards stared around them, scratching their heads.
The last of the Flyte cars pulled away.
And then a final message over the PA system, one Helen hadn’t expected. It was delivered in mocking tones:
“Just kidding! You’ve just been fucked, courtesy of Cobalt and the Robin Hood Thief. Have a nice day!”
As the prison guards stared at each other in horror, Helen began to laugh.
Helen headed home exhausted, dizzy, feverish, and preoccupied. Some thought nagged at her, wordless and stubborn. She couldn’t bring it into focus.
She started the drive slowly because of the swooning sensation of a moderate fever. But when she realized she was weaving, she reduced her speed even further. At least almost every other car was computer-driven. They’d dodge her effortlessly.
As she pulled into the parking garage at home, her mind cleared enough for her to realize that she should have left her car somewhere and gotten a lift with Flyte. She grimaced. Her brain just wasn’t working properly. But then again, that was an understatement.
Unable to resist her curiosity, she sat in her car as she checked the news and Whatsit. With traffic and her slow pace, it had taken her two hours to get home, and that was an eternity in Internet time.
As she read, her heart sank. Not because the job had failed, but because it had succeeded.
Her favorite politician, former President Elaine Decatur, had denounced her.
Reluctant and full of dread, Helen played the video of her statement.
For weeks, the radical activist Robin Hood Thief stole and blackmailed while she rallied support for her illegal actions. Many questioned her motives and her intentions, while others, including myself, thought of her as essentially harmless—or perhaps even commendable.
When the bombings occurred in central Florida, we had to take a step back and reconsider her true nature.
But this time, there can be no question that the Robin Hood Thief has gone too far, dangerously far. We must finally call her what she is—a reckless vigilante who has endangered us all. Her true intentions are clear, and they are the complete destruction of our law-abiding society. I denounce her actions, and I ask all of you to remain calm as law enforcement takes action to correct this absolute wrongdoing.
Hundreds of other prominent politicians were joining in.
Her own fans were splitting on the issue.
[ Whoa. This is crazy. ]
[ Why would she do this? This isn’t stealing from the rich. It’s not the same kind of thing at all. This puts innocent people in danger. This is crazy and irresponsible. I can’t believe she did this. ]
[ Did you see her letter? She asked them to live by her values. I think she knew what might happen. And she was trying to stop it. ]
[ Then she’s an idiot if she thought they woud listen to that. ]
[ Robin,I saw your letter but it didn’t make any sense. I want to know from you directly, why? ]
[ And she got over a hundred of them shot. Did you see that? More than a hundred prisoners got shot like dogs on teh way out. That’s completely her fault. That blood is on her hands. ]
[ Well they’re better of dead if you ask me. More than half of the ones shot were Supermax solitary confinement. Way better off dead. ]
[ Shit y’all I’ve never owned a gun but I’m going out and buying one. You all should too. We’re about to have some serious crime. Better protect what’s yours or its going to get taken away. Not to mention people who are just gonna fucking kill each other. ]
[ Betcha pres Sokes is gonna use this to declare martial law ]
[ No he wont but its gonna be crazy out there!!!! Robin just killed a hundred people but it will be thousands before its over. ]
Helen closed her eyes, listening the ever-present thumping of her heart as her body heated up with a fresh wave of fever.
They didn’t understand. She hadn’t made herself clear. Now what? Was there any point in defending herself or explaining herself now?
Or maybe she’d been wrong. Her brain was days away from shutting down in coma and death. Maybe she couldn’t think straight anymore. Cobalt couldn’t function as a check against her, because he was basically antisocial, and maybe she should have asked so
meone who had a conscience before she decided to do this thing.
She’d always daydreamed of this—letting out all the criminals. The evidence was clear that imprisonment didn’t rehabilitate criminals and dramatically increased recidivism. But actually doing it… had it been the right thing after all?
She couldn’t stop scanning the comments.
There was a message from Christian at LSTV.
Wow, reducing our incarceration rate by 50% overnight was an incredible idea. I have to tell you, although I probably shouldn't, professionally speaking—I love it. I completely support what you've done. Seriously, Robin, I think I've become one of your biggest fans.
You really get what's happening in this world of ours, and unlike everyone else, you're doing something about it. Something huge and crazy and real. You've got blood on your hands, and I don't mean that as an attack or a reproach. I’m a veteran, so I understand that blood has to spill sometimes. Change has never been made peaceably, but most people are too afraid to make it happen. You stepped up and did this for the rest of us, for all of us. You’re like an army of one.
But I know you've realized that not everyone else gets it. Come on, Robin, this is the time to have an interview with me. You can speak to the whole world and they'll listen. You can clear the air. Don't you think you owe it to the history books to clarify what you were really about?
Helen let out a long breath. She appreciated the sentiment with all her heart. But she was still afraid that he could somehow track her down if she spoke to him in real time.
Finally, she replied. [ I said it all in my letter. At least, I tried. ]
The next comment on her profile made her heart sink.
[ What good does it even do? Good she got rid of their records, but she just added hundreds of thousands of people into the labor market who aren’t gonna be able to find jobs and they’re just going to go back to what they were doing before. They’re just going to end up back in jail. ]
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