Take Us to Your Chief

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  “I believe you’ll find them in the compartment right above the doorlock display.”

  Once again, Mac was right. Mitchell’s appreciation for the computer was growing.

  “Mac, you are a lifesaver.” Mitchell plugged them into the proper input.

  “A bit of an exaggeration, but I will accept the compliment. Enjoy.”

  “Thanks, Mac.” Mitchell felt real gratitude to the automated voice and programmed personality.

  “All in a day’s work. I will take care of business while you mourn.”

  Putting the headphones on, Mitchell could hear Papa Peter’s voice rising above the others’ and feel the pounding of the drum. He could feel everything his grandfather was washing over him. It was good. Song after song made him realize that even though he was only one quarter Anishinabe, he could be fairly confident he was the only Anishinabe out here in the asteroid belt, possibly the only one outside of Earth and the three space stations. This was the only drum music for millions and millions of kilometres. This was a responsibility.

  As his grandfather used to say, he’d better step up and represent, because he was a hell of a long way from home. Mitchell started humming, his fingers beating a rhythm on the plastic console.

  As promised, Mac watched over Mitchell as he visited with his grandfather.

  Dreams of Doom

  I know this will make me sound like I’m crazy, but I’m not. At least I hope not. Everything I am about to tell you is true, no matter how crazy it may sound. I can hear them approaching, so I will have to be quick. I don’t know how long this will stay online, but hopefully, by God’s or whoever you may believe in’s grace, these few minutes are enough to get the story out. A few minutes is better than no minutes. Read this as fast as you can. Print it out if possible. Spread the word any way you can.

  My name is Pamela Wanishin and I work… used to work… for a small Aboriginal newspaper called the West Wind, located in Otter Lake, a small Ojibway community in Central Ontario. We covered the usual political, social and environmental bullshit that happens in First Nations communities and the larger Aboriginal political universe. Nothing extraordinary or particularly award-winning. Just the minutiae of Aboriginal life. In the world of investigative journalism, we were hardly a threat.

  Of course, that was when the West Wind still existed. Three days ago, our funding was mysteriously cut. Asbestos was found in our building, which is odd since it was built fifteen years after asbestos was banned. Four of our staff are in jail. Two reporters for possessing four kilos of weapons-grade nuclear fuel, found in a large gutted deer hanging to cure in their backyard. Two other employees for wanting to join ISIS. One-way plane tickets to Turkey were found in their underwear drawers. And one intern is missing. The authorities say they have evidence she was selling government secrets to foreign powers. Strange when you consider she didn’t know the difference between Australia and Austria. But the government is never wrong, right? I’m all that’s left… And I don’t know for how long.

  First things first. Four days ago, a package arrived at our office. Sally, our part-time combination reporter/receptionist/IT person—a proud Mohawk woman we were told planned to travel to the Middle East to become a jihadi’s bride—dropped it on my desk with a thud.

  “It says ‘Editor.’ I guess that’s you.” Our job titles were kind of loosey-goosey, and it was Thursday, making me the editor.

  The plain, medium-sized package looked so innocuous. Brown wrapping paper, almost like butcher’s paper, no label, no return address, just our address in a childish, hurried scrawl. Sally looked on as I removed the packaging. Inside a small cardboard box, I found what appeared to be a broken and crushed dream catcher, with a thumb drive.

  “How peculiar,” was Sally’s reaction.

  The mystery was mounting. The reporter in me was intrigued. Mysterious packages from unknown sources didn’t usually arrive with a thump on my desk.

  “Well, let’s take a look” was Sally’s suggestion.

  Otter Lake is an Ojibway community, but for various reasons, Sally found her way here and became the community Mohawk. There are very few jobs where being nosy, bossy and clever is actually an asset. Working at a small monthly newspaper is one of them. Looking back, it’s nearly impossible for me to picture her in a burka, subservient to some overbearing, narrow-minded guy with a rifle, eating hummus and figs. Sally didn’t like any of those things. Most Mohawk women wouldn’t. Actually, most Native women wouldn’t embrace that lifestyle, not for all the bannock in the world. But the authorities found incriminating emails and a dress pattern for a burka in her bottom drawer, amid all her sweatpants and thongs.

  “Okay,” I agreed, and plugged the thumb drive into my computer. My first mistake.

  It took about three seconds for it to open and the files to download. Wow, I thought. There were a lot of them. All different kinds. Most seemed to be tech files, dealing with harmonics and frequency modulation. Others were schematics of antennas and crystal vibration rates. And then there were the reports on testing and research, many bearing the logo of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. I scanned as quickly as I could, until I heard Sally’s voice again.

  “Okay, I’m bored.” The future enemy of the state stepped outside to have a cigarette.

  Our newspaper had already been put to bed, as we say in the business, ready to be sent out to the printers. So I had some spare time to look this stuff over. Everything that popped up on my screen was puzzling. And what was it doing at our newspaper? We had a few discreet stringers who worked for the government, and they were good for the occasional leak or substantiated rumour, but this seemed a little out of our league. Still, I was hooked. I read and read. It was late in the day, and I was happy for something interesting to make the remaining time pass quickly. I was barely conscious of Sally and the rest leaving for the night as I sat there, reading file after file, and then rereading them. Comparing some of the test reports with the anticipated results. Some of these reports were decades old; others were dated just a month ago. Whatever these people were up to, it had been a long time in the planning. But I’m getting ahead of myself… It seemed this was important enough for somebody to steal all these files, most of which were clearly marked “Classified,” and then send them to me. But why me? Why the West Wind? And what the hell did a trashed dream catcher have to do with anything?

  By about ten that night, after I’d gone through just a small portion of the files, the accumulation of information I had so far amassed was beginning to answer a good number of my questions but also to generate quite a few more. And the answers were not pleasant. In fact, they were horrifying.

  Finally aware of my growing hunger and the waning hours, I went home, clutching my computer and the thumb drive closely. Above my bed hung a small, unassuming dream catcher that an aunt had given me three years ago when I got my job at the West Wind. I set myself up on my bed with a bowl of day-old hangover soup and some tea, the dream catcher hanging over me as I continued to pore over the files. Each successive file made me increasingly uncomfortable. Looking back and forth from the construction schematics on my screen to the dream catcher over my right shoulder, I was struck by a realization. The dream catcher’s circular construction, with the hole in the middle of the lacing, resembled an eye. Not knowing what else to do, and feeling a bit silly, I put the dream catcher in a drawer in the spare room down in the basement.

  I live alone now, ever since Larry and I broke up a couple months back, in a house I rent from my uncle. It’s kind of small, just the essentials, near the lake and pretty isolated. When you spend all day working in an office and talking with people on the phone or in person, you learn to treasure your alone time. Upon reflection, that may have been a bad decision. Living alone, unfortunately, means living alone, by yourself, nobody else. I was a good quarter-kilometre from anybody else, looking at what I was sure were classified files. Mayb
e this level of intelligence is why I never rose above middle management.

  I fell asleep. Like a bad acid trip, dream catchers of all different sizes and designs paraded through my unconscious mind. I remember several chasing me, dive-bombing me like rabid eagles.

  I woke with a start the next morning, my head buried under a pillow for protection. After a brief internal debate, I decided to call Sally and tell her I wasn’t feeling well. With the paper already finished for the month, it would be a slow week anyway, and I thought a day finishing up that voluminous list of files might be more productive.

  Still in my jammies, I prepared a plate of toast with peanut butter and another cup of tea. I grabbed the notepad I’d been jotting down notes on and began to leaf through it, refreshing my mind and confirming what I had read, not dreamt, the night before.

  Looking through the warren of files and charts, one phrase had kept coming up. Project Nightlight. What an odd term. I knew what a night light was. I had one for years as a child after a bat found its way into my bedroom one night. It wouldn’t protect me against bats, but at least I would be able to see them coming. But Project Nightlight… What the hell was that? As the reporter’s adage dictates, when in doubt, Google. It was a mistake that would come back to haunt me.

  I typed the two words into the rectangular box and pressed the return key. The search engine searched. And searched some more. A good twenty or thirty seconds passed with nothing much happening. I tried again, but now my keyboard seemed uninterested in what my fingertips were telling it. My laptop had frozen. Then, a second later, the screen went dead. Two seconds later, the power in the entire house went down. Three seconds later, my heart was pounding in my chest. Normally I can believe in coincidence, but not that day.

  Living in the country, you get used to power failures. I had a supply of candles and flashlights hidden somewhere for just such an emergency. But there were no thunderstorms anywhere in the area. The sun was streaming in through my kitchen window. My first thought—or prayer—was that maybe somebody had hit a hydro pole or something. It had been known to happen. Growing increasingly nervous, I looked out my window and could see Clyde and Shelley’s house on the other side of the small bay. I could see their porch light was still on, and so was the flashing marque at the gas station near the highway, so there was still electricity flowing into the reserve. It seemed only I had no power. I took out my cellphone. “Network unavailable.”

  Every reporter, whether they work for some supermarket tabloid, a city newspaper or a Native paper, harbours a certain amount of paranoia. It comes with the job. Mine, by now, was no longer “a certain amount.” It was raging like teenage hormones on prom night. Over the last ten hours, I had been reading as much as I could cram into my brain. And I had developed a few conspiracy theories about what all that info meant, with the comfort and safety of knowing nothing like that ever really happens. Especially in Otter Lake. Yet another mistake I made.

  As I searched my kitchen drawers for a flashlight so that I could go down into the basement to check the breakers, my cellphone blurbled, a sort of half-hearted ring. It glowed, seeming to have a life of its own. Picking it up, I could see an app downloading. By itself. What little I knew about cellphones told me they are not supposed to do that. Finally, it stopped. Download complete. A moment or two passed as I watched the phone, waiting for it to come to life and declare its sentience. Instead, it rang, normally this time. However, the image on the screen indicated it was a Skype call. I didn’t have Skype on my phone. But now it seemed I did. What an uncomfortable coincidence.

  Very, very hesitantly, I pressed the answer button. One of the few times in my life I hoped it was some telemarketer calling. Standing in the dark of my house, I said hello.

  There was no response. No image on the screen either. So much for Skype. Again, I talked to the phone in my hand. “Ahneen. Is anybody there?” I don’t know why I said hello in Ojibway. No Ojibway I know would know how to do anything remotely close to this.

  Still no response from my once best friend, now an alien phone, though I thought I could hear the sound of slight movement. Of course, it could have been my imagination. At that point, I think I would not have been surprised if Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, the Terminator and the prime minister of Canada had all poured into my living room. That, I probably could have handled. But this, the not knowing, the mystery—this was pure hell. I do not do creepiness well.

  “Okay, I’m hanging up.”

  “Hold on. One second please. I can’t read as fast as I once could.”

  It was a voice. A man’s. Older. Educated. He sounded white and slightly distracted.

  I was way too uncomfortable for such a beautiful morning. “Who are you?”

  I heard the man clear his throat. “Okay, I think I’m up to speed. My apologies. You took us quite by surprise, and I had to scan a lot of material in a remarkably short period of time. How’s the weather out there? It looks like we’re expecting a storm by mid-afternoon.”

  This man seemed to be an awfully polite mystery. Everything about this whole thumb drive incident was throwing me off.

  “No clouds.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Ms. Wanishin, I believe…”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Oh my, that would take far too long to go into. Let’s just say… I work for the government. But enough about me, let’s talk about you.”

  I did not want to talk about me. Most definitely I did not want that. Everything was wrong. I was standing in my kitchen, in my jammies, talking to somebody from the government who had managed to hack into my cellphone. Only the day before I had been transcribing audio from the band council meeting, the most hated part of my job. Never thought I’d miss doing that.

  I put my phone on speaker and set it down on the counter, beside the empty Shake ’n Bake box from Tuesday’s dinner, and backed away. I knew the device itself wasn’t the problem, but I still didn’t want to be touching it.

  “It’s about the thumb drive, isn’t it?”

  There was a small chuckle at the other end. The voice sounded well mannered, even amiable. “Well, I guess even that much must be obvious. Yes, it seems somebody in our department has been very naughty and peed in our Rice Krispies. We believe we know who it is and are in the process of taking steps to deal with the leak, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “And what department would that be?” Even under stress, the reporter in me came out.

  “Let’s just say I work in a special branch of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. You wouldn’t know the name. It’s rather hush-hush. And please, pick up your phone and hold it properly. I really don’t like looking at your ceiling. Especially in the dim light.”

  Suddenly, the lights in the house came on. Just like that.

  “Ms. Wanishin, the cellphone please…?”

  If creepiness was like a light, I would have been blind by then. I did as the man asked and picked up my phone, looking directly into its blank screen. My house had never felt more empty or remote.

  “That’s better. Now I can see you properly.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “Well, that’s probably for the best. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, as they say. How I look is unimportant. I am just a nameless and faceless cog in the grinding wheels of bureaucracy. A true minion. Sad but accurate. And as such, the less that is known about me the better. But regarding you, Ms. Wanishin, it seems we have a problem. And by extension, so do you.”

  I forced out a question. “What department?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What department of Indigenous Affairs do you work for? I know them all.”

  “Ah, I remember taking philosophy in university and always being startled by the humongous difference between what people think they know and what they actually know. What you don’t know, Ms. W
anishin, is far greater than what you do know. Still, I don’t suppose there would be a problem in telling you we are an undisclosed, rather unheralded but important branch, kept off the books, you could say. Only a handful of people within the government know of our existence. We work best in the shadows.”

  At that moment, my life was nothing but shadows. “What’s your charter? Your mandate?”

  Once again, I heard his small chuckle. “My, you are the intrepid little reporter, aren’t you? Why should I tell you? I’m sure telling you what little I already have has bent our rules somewhat. But I like you, Ms. Wanishin, I do. And I am sorry to have put you in this difficult position.”

  “What difficult position?” I tried to swallow my fear. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

  This time, I heard the man sigh. An exhalation full of regret and reluctance. I found myself looking out the kitchen window at my lilac-bordered driveway, the outline of my car urging me to run. Shoes, I thought. It might be prudent to put on shoes and grab a coat. I had an uncomfortable feeling about where the rest of this conversation and day were going. I tried to keep the cellphone positioned so that this guy, whoever he was, couldn’t tell what I was doing. For that reason, I chose to slip into flats since I didn’t have to tie them.

  “I am afraid so. Through no fault of your own, you have come to possess some classified information that for the safety of our country cannot be allowed to be disseminated to the public. Obviously, with you being a reporter, there is a conflict there, as I am sure you can see. It, therefore, requires that we take immediate action.”

  “Project Nightlight, right?”

  “Right, Project Nightlight. Those two words will be the final two nails in your coffin, I am sorry to say.”

  “Literally or metaphorically?”