by R E Kearney
“Ok, that’s enough. I get it. SPEA is an independent state built on a metal island in the Pacific. You can listen to the rest of it later.” Minister Wilson motions for Robert to stop his PCD.
Robert shuts it off and slides it into his robe pocket.
Wilson fiddles with his desk computer. “So here is our simple plan. We are flying you to D.C. on a commercial flight, so you don’t attract any extra attention. You need to act as if you’re on a business trip. I imagine that won’t be too difficult for a businessman like you. Once you land, you proceed to the SPEA embassy in DC. They know you are coming. At the embassy, you do whatever their ambassador instructs you to do so you are allowed to meet with your friend Mugavus. Hopefully, this savant cyberwarrior woman named Pion is with her. Then, somehow, you convince them to fight another cyberwar for the US.”
Minister Wilson stops and thinks for a moment then adds, “Oh, and you need to move fast. These assassinations and murders are old news now. Our Intelligence tells us the Russians are beginning to reinforce and redeploy their military in the Baltics. Sounds to me like the Russians are straining at that ceasefire like a snarling, snapping Pit Bull on a fragile leash. They are eager to attack. This is a volcano that is about to erupt and destroy us all.”
Chapter 7
Society Preserving Endangered Agriculture
Robert’s Air Canada airplane climbs out of Ottawa’s Macdonald–Cartier International Airport headed to Washington D.C. Below him, stuck on the tarmac, are three US commercial airline airplanes and hundreds of angry, stranded passengers. All US commercial airlines are grounded this morning. Their companies’ computers have been hacked. At midnight, when US airlines began experiencing significant problems with their flight dispatch systems, the Federal Aviation Administration quickly issued a ground stop, effectively grounding all US airlines and shutting down air travel in, out and around America. His cramped Air Canada flight has the sky to itself.
Robert contorts in his window seat struggling to manufacture a little privacy space so he can discretely view and listen to his antiquated PCD. It is time he learns some more about this state called SPEA. Unfortunately, the obese, tattooed American woman overflowing her seat into his is a snoop. She is making it extremely difficult for him to privately peruse the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s confidential reports. Wishing that he had been allowed to bring his hologlasses, he twists away from her greasy, gooey, gluttonous globs of flesh again and attempts to begin his review.
As soon as the words Society Preserving Endangered Agriculture appear, his corpulent neighbor pokes him in his ribs and loudly announces in a nasal screech, “My pastor says them people is evil atheists. Yep, Pastor Bush said he seen them burning crosses. You oughtn’t to be reading that. You oughta be reading the writings of President Abaddon. He’s a pastor and man of God.”
Since his effort to ignore her failed, Robert decides to act as if he does not understand her by responding to her in French. “Je ne vous comprend pas. Je ne parle pas anglais, vous truie obèses.”
Unfortunately, speaking French only seems to encourage her. “Oh, you’re one of them foreigners. I shoulda knowed causa your color. We don’t see many foreigners in Platte. We used to have a doctor from Pakistan that looked like you, but he weren’t Christian, so the local Posse Comitatus runned him off. Now we don’t have no doctor in Platte. Missouri that is where I’m from. I’m Pat from Platte Missouri. Where you from?”
Afraid that she will continue her pointless ramblings, if he answers, Robert remains silent and squeezes himself as small as possible into the tiny part of his seat next to the airplane’s bulkhead, farthest away from her, and turns the screen of his PCD away from her.
She continues to chatter, but now it is the unfortunate fellow on her other side who suffers. “I don’t know how I’m gonna to get back to Platte, what with all them airplanes being grounded and all. I just come up here to Canada for my cousin’s funeral. I don’t like Canada. I can’t wait to get back to Missouri where we ain’t got no funny talking foreigners. Sides, I got to be back to work at Wal-Mart tomorrow. I just pray to God. He’ll make it alright. President Abaddon, you know, he made it a law to pray. He’s a preacher you know, a real believer and saint, and…”
Actually, Robert regards Abaddon as being far from a saint. A smarmy, fast-talking televangelist and mega-church leader, Abaddon collected his fortune by pumping funds out of OIL – Old, Infirm and Lame - believers. Abaddon is the OIL King. In his congressional district he achieved cult status where worshippers such as Pat groveled before him and believed his every pronouncement, no matter how insane. Now as President, the OIL continue their unquestioning adulation of him while the rest of the remaining US population cowers in fear. Publicly criticizing Abaddon has proven fatal.
Meanwhile, Pat babbles. Hearing Pat’s twang and cackling reminds Robert of the painful beating he suffered from four rural regressives when he attended Coalition military training at Fort Riley Kansas. While drinking beer in a nearby Junction City tavern, he learned that rural regressives, as he labeled them, are Peter Pans or men who refuse to mentally mature and persist on living in their invented Never-Ever-Was lands of a glorified, non-existent past.
Remembering his encounter in Junction City, Robert recalls a statement he read by Montaigne. “Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.” Self-deluding malcontents, rural regressives loathe anybody and everybody who is successful. Gays, Jews, Blacks, intelligent women, and, most especially, liberal scientists who propose that humans are causing, what the regressives claimed is non-existent global warming, are all conspiring against them they believe. As they explained to him, they know, with certainty, because they passed basic High School science, and because some radical, right-wing-radio, blather-blabber told them so, that global warming is a nefarious plot designed to steal their livelihoods.
Another lesson Robert recollects learning about rural regressives - never tell them the truth. Foolishly, after he had guzzled too many beers to retain his common sense and had listened to one, drunk man-child complain endlessly, Robert told him that he epitomized the masculinization of poverty. Then, he exacerbated his problem by informing him that his girlfriend had deserted him because he had no initiative, no education, no skills and no prospects.
Rural regressives do not enjoy being told that the women who discard them are smarter than them or that they attended college; moved away; found jobs that paid twice as much as they will ever earn; and forgot them. Robert realized too late that such realistic talk shrivels their penises, shrinks their testes and compels them to buy larger and louder trucks they cannot afford, but most importantly, enrages them.
Robert also remembers discovering that night that when you are inebriated and your lips are flapping faster than your mind is thinking, asking rural regressives if the large FFA initialed on their jackets means future failures of America infuriates them, as does asking them if their NRA patch stands for naturally ridiculous asshole. And just because they are always all drinking together, do not jokingly call them homosocials. They did not understand or appreciate his intoxicated humor. The truth hurts, Robert discovered, but not as much as furious, farm boys’ fists.
Robert rubs his now healed, but previously fractured, jaw and wonders in his current sober and clear headed condition if those four ne’er-do-wells are happy now. Abaddon has turned time backward and returned the US to the world they craved –prejudiced, mediocre and moribund. Laughed at losers before Abaddon took power, they are now in control. Semi-literate, semi-educated, semi-employed, and forsaken by all wise women, they are now the decision makers. Returning to a US under their domination continues to horrify him.
Robert shoves those musings out of his mind and accesses the SPEA report again. He increases his earphone’s volume until it drowns out Pat’s endless ramblings. Although it is painful and makes his ears ring, at least he does not hear her. After being tortured by fat Platte Pat’s
prattle, listening to the Canadian Security’s Intel report is a soothing relief as it briefly sketches SPEA’s short history.
“Eight years ago, SPEA fled US religious persecution and prosecution and established itself as an independent state. SPEA departed the US following Speaker of the House of Representatives, Reverend Abaddon’s seizure of the US Presidency after President Clanton and Vice President Moore were simultaneously assassinated.
“Although there was no evidence to support him, Abaddon claimed Muslim assassins from ARTAS killed the President and Vice President. He then used the turmoil and confusion following the assassinations to immediately implement martial law nationwide. To enforce his martial law, he employed the Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities laws to federally activate Posse Comitatus groups and Christian militias. He established his Society Security or SS force by rolling the FBI, Homeland Security, DEA and other national security agencies together under one director, his long-time friend Reverend Hale Himmler.
“Despite the fact that no assassins were identified or linked to ARTAS or any foreign group, the SS, Posse Comitatus and militias initiated a nationwide religious and ethnic cleansing under Abaddon’s Christian Identity Movement. Purges of suspected, less-than-loyal members were conducted within the original agencies, as well. With Abaddon’s support and encouragement, the SS, Posse Comitatus and militias implemented vigilante justice arresting, imprisoning or deporting any suspected non-Christians, all immigrants and alleged Liberals. Nobody was safe. Everybody was suspect. Everybody was under surveillance.”
Robert vividly and painfully recalls those days of turmoil and terror in the US. He was enjoying a well-deserved vacation in San Francisco when the US’ descent into pandemonium started. Three days before he left San Francisco, US President Clanton was assassinated in Little Rock by a laser shot from an aerodrone. Four minutes later, Vice President Moore was similarly assassinated in Knoxville by a laser shot from a second aerodrone. With both assassinations, the Secret Service agents had curiously separated themselves sufficient steps away from the President and Vice President that they suffered no harm. Neither the President nor Vice President had been declared officially dead when Speaker of the House of Representatives, Reverend Abaddon had himself sworn in as US President under the Constitution’s presidential line of succession. Immediately after his swearing in was completed, Abaddon named Chennai his Vice President and in the same statement declared the US under martial law.
Under martial law and for his own safety as a foreigner from Canada, Robert was confined to his hotel and incommunicado for three days. Three long days of not knowing what was actually occurring outside of his hotel and San Francisco. He and his fellow sequestered guests heard only rumors or propaganda. With the rumors arising from the propaganda and conspiracy theories pumped at them twenty-four hours a day by Abaddon’s long-time, sycophantic mouthpiece – Fox Cable News or False Cable News or Faux Cable News as it quickly became known among those trapped in the hotel. All of the other news providers had been silenced by Abaddon under his martial law declaration. He also attempted, but failed, to block the Internet and social media. He could not control what he did not understand.
Abaddon shut down all other information sources immediately after a reporter working for an objective news network imprudently asked the question, ‘Since the Righteous Rightists could never win the US Presidency through free and honest elections, did they steal it through assassination?’ Faux Cable News reported that the foolishly brave reporter had been arrested and charged with inciting insurrection. One day later, Faux Cable News reported that the arrested reporter had committed suicide in her cell. To everyone, but Abaddon’s cronies, all of the events were extremely suspicious, beginning with the twin assassinations.
International news organizations declared Abaddon as the man who murdered himself into the White House. Within days, Abaddon’s Society Security forces had chased most of the international journalists out. A few, too-slow, foreign journalists were jailed. Robert has heard that an unfortunate few of them remained imprisoned.
Locating the extremely rare kernel of truth, buried deep within the obsequious Faux Cable News quickly became a drinking game for the bored hotel guests. Gathered in the hotel bar, the quests compared Faux News reports with truthful reports from social media. For every obvious Faux News lie or misrepresentation of facts, hotel guests drank a shot. Trying as hard as he could, he never located any facts or truths in any of Faux’s news, so he drank a lot. After two days, all of the hotel guests declared that Faux never provided any facts or truth. But by then, they had found laughing at Faux news’ ridiculous claims and simply drinking a far too enjoyable way to waste time. Then the hotel bar ran out of alcoholic beverages and the fun ended. And as any true Canadian will tell you, when the alcohol is gone it is time to go.
Only because he was a Canadian military officer was he finally allowed to leave the protection of the city for home. But, San Francisco authorities strongly warned him against traveling alone or leaving the main highways in rural America. “They’ve gone crazy in the country! Abaddon’s backwoods bubbas are armed, dangerous and have seized control.”
A fellow Canadian, a Jewish psychotherapist also locked in the hotel, refused to leave until he could fly directly from San Francisco to Israel. He called Robert crazy when he suggested that they return to Canada together. “I know the fools that are out there. I’ve researched these groups for the past decade. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You cannot reason with these people. Their belief in a highly combustible mix of extreme religious, social, and political views makes them extremely dangerous and incorrigible.”
He continued to caution Robert, as he packed. “If you were Jewish, you’d realize the biblical significance of Abaddon seizing the Presidency and turning his science deniers, Righteous Rightists and other confederates loose to torture and brutalize the US. In Hebrew, the name Abaddon means place of destruction or the Destroyer and according to Revelations is the name of the angel of the Abyss. Now, in Revelations, when Abaddon blows his trumpet, the Abyss, which is described as a great smoking pit, will open, and a horde of demonic locusts will rise out of it. These creatures will be given the power to torture any person who does not bear God’s seal and the pain they inflict will be so intense that sufferers will wish to die. So as the ruler of the Abyss, Abaddon is the king of these demonic locusts or in our case, President of the science deniers, Righteous Rightists and other radical-right, evangelical buffoons.”
As Robert hauled his bags to his rented driverless car, the psychotherapist followed and continued lecturing him. “Small towns spawn small minds. They’re uneducated, ignorant, unemployed rural rubes who finally have some power, after years of being laughed at as the village idiot and dismissed. They are feckless failures and brainless bullies. And those are just the leaders. Worker bees in the movement tend to be much lower-educated. Abaddon is galvanizing militia members who truly think apocalypse is at hand. They see themselves as moving into a heroic domain, a higher purpose. So, I’m staying right here until I immigrate to Israel. I’ve no desire to die in a ditch or nailed to some Christian Militia’s cross.”
Unfortunately, although concerned, Robert had no choice at that time. All non-military airplanes were grounded, forcing him to traverse the three thousand miles between San Francisco and Canada by highway. It was a harrowing, horrifying six day ride. Remembering his earlier experiences with rural regressives in Kansas, he only traveled during the day and never left the main highway. But, despite his best efforts, he was still swallowed up in the Christian Militia and Posse Comitatus violence in rural areas of Nebraska and Iowa. Hate strangled the heartland.
Just outside of Grand Island, Nebraska, a local Christian Militia harassed him at their hastily erected check point on Interstate 80. Six morbidly obese, white men with Confederate battle flags sewn onto their shirts next to a cross forced Robert to exit his car. His new, driverless, electric car enflamed
their hate for the robots and the computers replacing them. With hammers and boards, they unleashed their angry abuse on the rental car, denting and scratching it. Later, they laughed as they repeatedly slammed him against his now battered vehicle.
Because he is mulatto, the Militia accused him of being a rag-head Arab. With breath stinking so strongly of beer, cigarettes and pyorrhea that it made Robert’s eyes water, they screamed and spit racial insults into his face. They rifled through his luggage and car tossing his clothes onto the pavement, and stepping on them while they searched. Looking for guns and drugs, they claimed, which Robert considered quite ironic. To him, it seemed that all of the guns in the US were in the hands of the militias and Conservative crazies and not with people like him. Finally, after an hour of abuse and battering, Robert was allowed to proceed. But, the militiamen only allowed him to reload the car and progress after he promised them he would leave America and not return. Ignoring the disappearance of the five hundred dollars inside his Canadian passport also helped facilitate his escape.
East of Iowa City near the town of West Branch, Robert encountered the local Posse Comitatus vigorously enforcing President Abaddon’s edicts. His car was forced to stop by the side of highway by a dilapidated pick-up truck carrying four armed men in its truck bed. This time, the Posse Comitatus was not after him. They were clearing the highway so a convoy, which another battered pick-up truck was leading, could pass. Robert watched packed car after packed car pass. He noticed that all of the people riding in the cars appeared to be Asian or African. He also noticed that there were University of Iowa bumper stickers or University of Iowa parking stickers on the majority of the cars. Sadly, he concluded that even the University’s staff had not escaped Abaddon’s pogrom.