Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom

by Christian Hale

  Chapter Eight

  Mick was struggling as he did his best to keep up with Ally’s moderate uphill pace.

  “Ally… it’s the elevation. The air…is thin.”

  Mick’s excuse was the same at the beginning of the hike, a little ways past the base of Mount Rinjani – Indonesia’s second highest volcano. Now, approaching the rim of the crater, Mick’s complaining was somewhat more understandable.

  “The beaches…Lombok has amazing beaches. I don’t know why we aren’t still down there. I can see them from here…”

  “I thought you would have had enough of beaches after so many years in Mexico,” replied Ally.

  “No. Never. I love beaches. Mountains…and volcanoes… They’re a little more difficult than walking down to the beach for a quick swim.”

  “I expected more from a young army veteran,” said Ally, clearly enjoying Mick’s suffering.

  “Intel. I was in intel. And then I did archival work. I didn’t hike up and down volcanoes.”

  “Mick, you’ll thank me when you see the view at the top.”

  “I already did. I saw all the pictures.”

  “Then why don’t you just look at pictures of the beach instead of going to the beach?”

  Mick decided to conserve his breath. He had none to spare.

  Eventually, Mick’s torment came to a pause at the rim of the volcano. The view was far better than anything the photos could show. In one direction were the beaches of Lombok, and in the other was the turquoise volcanic lake. Mick was about to express his amazement, then he thought better of it. Ally would say ‘I told you so’ in response. He knew she would.

  Later, as the sun was setting, Mick grew fidgety as he wasn’t used to such silence. He decided to pick a fight for fun and amusement.

  “Ally, why aren’t you crazy like all the other anarchists?”

  “Do you want to sleep in the tent tonight, or outside on the ground?”

  “Seriously though, why aren’t you all angry and militant? You seem like a reasonable person.”

  “Quit believing everything you see online,” said Ally, hiding her exasperation. “We are low on crazies these days.”

  “Come on, seriously. If the anarchists take over, we won’t have a utopia, we’ll have the guillotine,” said Mick. “Plus, it would only take a few weeks until the anarchists are addicted to power and money. Absolute power corrupts…like, for sure.”

  Ally did not respond.

  “And then you all would start with the infighting. You would destroy yourself,” said Mick.

  “We already went through that phase over a decade ago, Mick. I know. I was a part of the infighting.”

  “Story time! Let’s hear some details…”

  “Well,” started Ally, “the Insurrectionary Anarchists were only really united by Robin Lapour. Plus, he rejected the idea of leadership in the way that you probably think about it. And he had just been thrown in prison for leading by example. That’s when the problems started. There were two factions that then started battling each other, but only with words at first. One side wanted to continue with the way it was: loosely affiliated members who didn’t take orders from any leader or committee. And on the other side was this guy named Carter.”

  “What side were you on?”

  “Not Carter’s. I was quite young, but I was all into ideology at the time, so I had some quite strict views on how we should organize ourselves. Carter wanted to turn the movement into his little personality cult. Or, at least that’s what I felt he wanted to do.”

  “Who won?”

  “Not Carter. I killed him.”

  “Are you serious? How old were you?”

  “Um, I had just turned twenty one.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Carter thought he was a lady’s man. It was merely one aspect of his whole cult-building personality. I had always avoided him and his circle, as the other women had told me that he was a little creepy. But nobody knew me. I was a nobody from the other side of the country. So I introduced myself to Carter and said what a great leader I thought he was. Of course he invited me over to his place to discuss the future of the anarchist movement. I accepted gladly. I went over to his place that night. When he answered the door, I shot him in the stomach. Quite a few times, actually. I emptied an entire magazine into him. I don’t know why. I mean, I don’t know why I shot him in the stomach so many times. I was so confident with a gun. I had planned on two in the chest and one in the head. But when the door opened….I don’t know.”

  Mick didn’t reply. He just listened quietly. It didn’t feel like the appropriate moment for a sarcastic moment.

  “Everybody knew it was me,” continued Ally. “Word got out immediately about the new girl who got the usual and expected invitation from Carter. Plus, I skipped town the same night. I wasn’t trying to hide it at all. But the way the story was told, it made me out to be some sort of self-defense hero. In fact, it was an internecine assassination. Nevertheless, many were convinced that Carter was a sexual predator and that I had bravely ended his reign of terror when he attacked me.”

  “Was he actually a sexual predator?”

  “He used his position of authority to attract women to his bed, for sure. But I don’t know if he used his position of authority to pressure them into his bed. I didn’t talk to any women he had been through. Whatever the case, he was a bit slimy. When I dragged his body out of the doorway and into his apartment, I saw a bottle of wine and two glasses waiting on his coffee table.”

  “So, obviously, you got away with killing him. What exactly happened to you after that?”

  “What I did by killing Carter was to help the Insurrectionary Anarchist movement to greatly clarify their views on top level leadership. I had eliminated the only high ranking member that fancied himself a charismatic leader who should be entrusted with ideology, operations and finance.”

  “So that’s what happened to the organization,” said Mick. “But what happened to you?”

  “There were a significant number of people loyal to the faction that Carter had run. They didn’t all just run away and quit. So I came back from hiding after a couple of months and helped to hunt them down and kill them. People started treating me like…a hitman.”

  “Hitwoman, Ally. You’re a hitwoman.”

  “Thanks,” said Ally forcing a small smile. “All these other anarchists gave me credit for so much. According to them, I was the ultimate defender of women. I had killed a serial rapist. I had saved the movement from splintering. But most importantly, I was an unstoppable killer. Pretty soon, people were too scared to disagree with me or contradict me in anyway.”

  “That’s my dream, actually,” said Mick.

  “Yeah, it’s actually not cool at all. Even my friends were intimidated. They acted as if every argument was going to be settled by me using deadly force. It was like Soviet Russia 1937.”

  “Wait, I’m missing something,” said Mick. “How did you first join the anarchists?”

  “Well, I was into music…”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “When I was a teenager, like fourteen or fifteen, I was going to shows. Punk rock.”

  “I thought punk rock was dead?” said Mick.

  “Well, it was a very small scene in a very big city. And it eventually disappointed me once I met the musicians. They said I was too young to come to their house parties and basement shows. They worried how it would look. But a few of them did take me to a shooting range regularly, that sort of thing. I think they wanted to adopt me like a foster child or something. They had become respectable, these punks. Some of them even had kids my age.”

  “Sounds like they were looking out for you, no?” said Mick.

  “Yeah, I was a feral kid. My mom didn’t care where I was. Anyways, after a while I was old enough to move around the scene without age-restriction checks by middle aged punk dads. And…the scene had its share of anarchists. But, as I came to l
earn, not the ones that could really be effective. After some investigation, like maybe five hours online, I joined up with the Insurrectionary Anarchists because they promised action. I bounced around anarchist circles for a while, moving from city to city – again and again. And that’s when I had the fortune to meet Carter. After that I moved up the ranks pretty quickly, mostly because the people at those ranks were dead. Not that we really have ranks. Not in the way that you think…”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” said Mick, “how did you get away with all the killings?”

  “Everybody was laughing at us, and the government was just sitting by and doing nothing. They were letting us killing each other off. We were doing their job for them. They didn’t investigate or arrest any suspects. I even got tips on target locations from people who were probably working for the police and FBI. I had free reign. I built a killing machine. A machine for killing fellow anarchists. And when Robin Lapour was killed in prison, I was able to transform the internal killing machine into an external killing machine.”

  “That’s when the government started to take an interest?”

  “Exactly,” said Ally. “Then the heavy government response started. But by the time they were able to start attacking us, we had some serious momentum. To tell you the truth, so many people joined and we had so many new resources that, I think, the movement didn’t really need me anymore. Then, because of our recruiting success, we had to start purging the unsavory new members who had joined for ulterior motives – like personal ambition.”

  “That sounds about right,” added Mick.

  “So I decided that I had to make a change,” said Ally. “I disappeared and moved to Europe for a while. It was there that I concentrated on helping anarchists and student loan debtors flee, disappear and evade surveillance. That sort of thing. Eventually some people based in Europe started Blue Team and recruited me. I joined up with them at a low level and, at the same time, I rejoined the Insurrectionary Anarchists back home. But by that time the anarchists had started operating in small isolated cells, and nobody had to know that I was back. I met mostly new people, and I was anonymous and under a new name. Almost nobody makes the connection to my backstory. One guy I’m close to knows. But Liz didn’t know. I had always wanted it that way.”

  Ally had begun to tell the story in a very matter-of-fact way, with no emotion. So Mick felt that he wouldn’t upset her with a question that was floating around in his head.

  “So, who has killed more people, you or The Executioner?”

  “Unless he has a secret body count that he’s not telling anybody about, I would say that I have an insurmountable lead over him.”

  “How has that worked out for you?”

  What do you mean?” asked Ally.

  “I mean. Do you stay awake at night thinking about it with deep regret? Or do you have a trophy wall decorated with the skulls of your enemies?”

  “You ask direct questions.”

  “So do you.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair.”

  “Well?”

  “I have no regrets,” said Ally confidently. “No PTSD. Every single person I killed had it coming. They needed to be killed. I sleep well at night.”

  “What have you killed more of, anarchists or non-anarchists?” asked Mick, not yet done with this line of questioning.

  Ally had to pause for thought.

  “Well, if you mean personally, by my own hands, then definitely anarchists. But if you include killings I approved or gave the orders for, then I’ve killed more non-anarchists.”

  “Do you think that you can transition from a kill-destroy-assassinate organization into a sort of political party or government structure? What I’m saying is, god forbid, could the anarchists run the United States of America?” asked Mick.

  Ally laughed. She laughed right at Mick’s face.

  “Revolutionaries suck at governing. I know this. I only want to inflict heavy damage on the system and make it accept changes to the point that it is unrecognizable. The days of some beret-wearing revolutionary running a state are long gone. You can’t rule this country. Nobody can. Certainly, we can’t.”

  “But let’s just say, for example,” said Mick, “that there is some sort of shock that brings the system down. Like a spontaneous street revolution that topples the government. It’s happened in plenty of places that weren’t expecting it. Why not America?”

  “Have the organizers of the protesters ever transitioned from running a protest to running a country?” asked Ally, who was about to answer her own question. “Usually, as soon as the government falls apart, counter-elites take power.”

  “Counter-elites?”

  “People with connections, money and/or guns and the will to use these resources,” said Ally. “They’re pretty much the same as the old elites, only that they were outside the ruling circle. The protestors and demonstrators are usually composed of students, professional demonstrators, labor unions, obscure political parties, leftists, religious crazies and, at home and in Europe, anarchists. Plus the bandwagon jumpers that join at the last minute when victory is in sight. These types of people pretty much never make it into the new government. And if they do, they have no influence over policy. There is rarely a true revolution, merely a regime change.”

  “So, you’re pessimistic?” asked Mick.

  “I’m realistic. The system adapts. It’s resilient. We are going through the decline and fall of the American Empire, and it might just be a three hundred year long process.”

  “What about the Insurrectionary Anarchists? You just think that they are a force that can be used to moderate and change the system by attacking it in small doses?”

  “Yes, that’s about it,” said Ally.

  “You are righteous killers. Is that how you imagine yourselves? Why did you feel that you needed to resort to killing as your main tactic?”

  This question annoyed Ally.

  “Why did we feel that we needed to resort to killing as a tactic? Because it is effective,” said Ally. “American society was, and is, like a spoiled brat that needs to be spanked, because that’s the only way to alter its behavior. It would have been great if we said ‘Do not rape, exploit or oppress because that’s not nice,’ and everybody responded by changing their ways. But they didn’t. And they won’t. I wish we could have encouraged the government to build a nation where we all live under equal rule of law. I wish we could have helped develop a culture of empathy that would make people realize that theft and cruelty is wrong. None of that worked. None of it will ever work. Murder, however, is amazing. Death, and the fear of death, was, and still is, the best, most effective way to change the behavior of a nation of sociopaths, criminals and assholes.”

  “Hmm,” responded Mick.

  “Yeah, don’t hide your apathy. People like you, the majority; you just stood by and let this all happen.”

  “Ally, from kindergarten through high school, my life was a series of humiliations and indignities – not only at school, but anywhere in my hometown. And then, at university, I was finally spared the physical violence, but it was still made clear to me that I was a person whose opinion wasn’t worth considering. Then, to pay back my insane student loan debt, I joined an undemocratic organization that doesn’t include the mandate of fixing American society. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you expect of people like me. I may be a relatively free and independent individual, but there is a nation of people who are overworked, underpaid and always living on the edge…and with their kids in tow. You expect them to all become, in the free time that they don’t have, social justice crusaders? And you expect to win them over. How? Your attacks? These killings? Don’t you realize that all this killing has done irreparable damage to your reputation? I mean…the reputation of the Insurrectionary Anarchists?”

  “All of history’s heroes are mass murderers. People love killers, as long as they win. We’re comparative amateurs as far as killing goes.”

  “And
there, that’s the source of my aggressive neutrality,” said Mick. “Or, as you call it, my apathy. I’m to choose between a corrupt, unfair system or a killing spree? Now what about Martin Luther King, Gandhi…. Nelson Mandela…. people like that? They succeeded without violence.”

  “They succeeded because the systems they were fighting were already on the way out. Segregation, colonialism, apartheid…they were dying as part of unstoppable historical trajectories – like the dominoes of the communist countries falling. Now imagine if Martin Luther King tried the same tactics in the 1920s, or if you took Gandhi and Mandela and put them fifty or even twenty years in the past. They and their peaceful tactics would have failed.”

  “Is our system on the way out as part of some unstoppable historical trajectory?”

  “No. Not anytime soon. It’s resilient.”

  “Yeah, you said that already,” noted Mick.

  “It’s worth repeating: too many people have a stake in continuing the way it is. And most others who don’t benefit are worried that radical change may go wrong and end up leaving them in an even worse situation. The system won’t collapse. But, if for whatever reason, the system does fall apart, we should not seek power. We are at best an antibiotic, we help regulate a system, we attack the worst of the system, but we can’t run it.”

  “That’s not exactly a very inspiring speech. You don’t start anarchist rallies with this sort of pessimism, do you?”

  “Well, we don’t do rallies; those are just ego-stroking exercises for narcissists.”

  “Ally, serious question: why are you still a member of the Insurrectionary Anarchists?”

  Ally didn’t feel like arguing anymore.

  “I don’t know, I guess it sort of turned into a job,” she said. “I have a place in life, I have a salary, I get to travel, I get to kill bad people. And I don’t know what I would do in real life if I quit.”

  “Sounds exactly like the reasons for joining and staying in the US Army.”

  “And you ran off on them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes I did. Perhaps you could take some inspiration from my brave act?”

  “Don’t give me any ideas, Mick.”

  “Seriously, why not? Can’t you quit the Insurrection Anarchists and be full-time with Blue Team?”

  “Mick, can we talk about something else?”

  “OK. What?”

  “I don’t know. You are the one that just can’t shut up,” said Ally. “Surely you can think of something else to discuss?”

  “OK, sure. I’ve got one. Not that I’m complaining,” said Mick, “but why have you been hauling me from tourist spot to tourist spot?”

  “Because the Indonesian government has strict face permission rules in all the tourist zones in the country.”

  “Face permission?”

  “You know, like in Europe when you publish a photo. Under European law, you have to switch out the faces in the photo with randomly generated fake faces unless you have permission. But here it applies to taking photos, uploading photos, sharing photos…pretty much everything. And you can’t use a camera or a phone here that isn’t connected to a network, so there’s no way to cheat.”

  “Oh yeah, that. So we’re pretty much invisible?”

  “Exactly,” said Ally. “Indonesia modelled the law on the European one, but they added the stipulation that you need to be connected to a network.”

  Ally’s tactic of sticking to tourist zones was a wise choice. She and Mick would appear in the background of many tourists’ photos and videos, but their faces would be replaced in the millisecond after the photo was taken. This was unless they gave their permission to the photographer by looking into the camera lens and saying ‘face permission’ in any language they chose. This was the moment at which you showed to any newfound friends that you trusted them – by giving face permission. It was not given very often.

  Of course, in the United States the various social media companies and law enforcement agencies lobbied against the tool being introduced into American law – one wanting to preserve their ability to do effective targeted advertising by knowing where you were all the time, and the other wanting to know where you are all the time, just in case they need to know.

  “In Mexico, people beat you up or harass you online for uploading photos of them,” said Mick. “But I like this system as well. It should be mandatory in the United States.”

  “Yeah, right. That will happen,” said Ally sarcastically.

  “So, uh, are we banished for all eternity to roam the tourist zones of Indonesia?”

  “No, sorry to have gotten your hopes up. We’re going to Jakarta after we get off this volcano. But we’re going separately.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We stick you in a hotel. Me and Blue Team will be nearby. The Executioner shows up. We grab him. And it’s done.”

  “That simple?” asked Mick.

  “That simple…Unless you have a better idea?”

  Mick and Ally then found a spot away from the rest of the foreign tourists who had pitched their tents for the night at the rim of the volcano. Mick had promised to memorize their cover stories that were to be used for small talk. This time Ally agreed to let Mick name her as his girlfriend. But, to Ally’s relief, nobody struck up a conversation with them. They settled into their tent in the dark, ready for a full night of sleep and an early morning hike to the summit of the highest peak on the rim. Mick, however, wasn’t finished talking for the night.

  “Ally, can we please talk about you needing to leave the Insurrectionary Anarchists?”

  “No. No, we can’t.”

  “So…good night?”

  “Good night, Mick. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning,” said Ally in a fake English accent.

  “What?” laughed Mick. “What’s that from?”

  “That’s from me…to you. Just now.”

  Mick immediately reached for his phone and spoke the quote, minus his name, into its search app. A short video clip appeared at the top of the search returns. Mick played it. It was a scene from an old film. He didn’t recognize it. A handsome swordsman dressed in black led a beautiful woman in a red dress through a dark and dangerous forest. The swordsman spoke the phrase to the woman, quoting from his days as a pirate’s apprentice when the ship’s captain would speak the same line to him every night.

  “Ally. This is amazing. This is us, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “But this woman in the video is far more feminine and graceful than you.”

  “Mick, it is us. But you’re the woman. I’m the brave swordsman. I’m saving you, exactly like this guy is about to save her from the quicksand.”

  “What, do you have the entire film memorized?”

  “No, I haven’t seen it in years. But there are a bunch of memorable lines and scenes in it.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Princess Bride.”

  “What a terrible title. Let’s watch it. Right now. Give me a second to find the whole movie.”

  “Mick, we’ll watch it when we get off the mountain. I’m too tired right now.”

  “Yeah, sure. That plus you probably can’t deal with how this film portrays women: as elegant, gentle and with beautiful hair.”

  “Mick?”

  “Yes, Ally?”

  “I might just instead kill you in your sleep tonight.”

  It was dark and Mick couldn’t see if Ally was smiling or not.