Larry was tight to a degree with Smoke because the MDRG’s “events” always swam in cannabis. Marijuana that Larry supplied.
“It’s like the hippies and the Hell’s Angels,” Larry had explained how he saw the MDRG in ASP. “The hippies looked at the Hells Angels, saw that they had the same long hair and did the same drugs, but they knew in their hearts that the Angels weren’t hippies.”
“Flowers die too easy. Even if they have thorns.” Smoke had said that once, quoting somebody.
“Didn’t see you there yesterday, at the SF demo,” Lori smirked, one of Smoke’s ex-lovers, her cigarette poised.
“The gang don’t like crowds much,” Smoke smiled broadly, “We did our important work the night before. And those of us who did go on Saturday did so masked.”
The suggestion hung there, suspended in the meeting’s air, for folks to make their own connections.
“I don’t know where things were before we got here,” Smoke easily assumed the floor. “But maybe we should talk about taking the next step. There are things on this campus; departments entirely devoted to military-related work and buildings substantially committed to the same work. Perhaps we need to call our own demo at one of the sites on campus. You know, maybe walk through and tour their work, make it impossible for them to go about business-as-usual...”
To say that all hell broke loose would be an understatement. It was clear in the raised voices and arguing that followed that Mitch, George, Joseph and others did not quite trust Smoke and his boys, even if some had sympathy for Smoke’s idea. David seemed to have an out-and-out, old fashioned male rivalry in mind every time the two sparred at a meeting, and it sometimes seemed he dug for things to disagree with in order to challenge and fight with Smoke.
“I think Smoke’s being excessively paranoid about the media,” David said to the meeting. “We can notify the media fifteen minutes before our demo without worrying that they’ll tip off the cops about our plans.”
“And who said the Revolution will not be televised,” Smoke smirked and stage whispered, giving the meeting a sly wink.
In turn Lori, Smoke’s former lover by his choice, often sided with him out of the sheer spunk and cussedness of Smoke’s stance. And, often as not, Smoke was able to strike the sympathetic chord in a meeting’s silent mass. In the end, the meeting agreed to a watered down version of Smoke’s original proposal, a mass student rally on Wednesday the first week of school, in Remley Plaza next to the Science and Engineering Complex to emphasize the University’s complicity in the war. Lori’s original proposal was incorporated as a task force created to study the possibility of further, future direct action, a grouping in ASP some were already calling the organization’s “action faction.” Smoke and the MayDay Revolutionist Gang left for the campus pub with a good portion of the ASP meeting in tow, leaving the heavy rads remaining to wonder out loud if the Gang had any tricks up their sleeves.
“So, what’s serious business?” Larry asked, as he and Greg wandered away from the Student Union, among the bizarre public art pieces semi-randomly littering the campus. ASU had been a sleepy community college in the 1970’s, until the baby boom’s baby boom converted it into an expanding State University serving the northern peninsula and wine counties in the 1980’s and thereafter. The bad, mostly abstract public art, had been donated to inaugurate the new SU by other California SUs, an unconscious act of hostility if there ever was one, given Alabaster’s practical educational focus.
“Janet and I, we’re not together anymore,” Greg jammed his hands into his pockets as both stepped around a triple pyramid sculpture in translucent shades of blue-green plastic, the top fifth of each pyramid suspended above the rest of the structure, as on the dollar bill, only sans eye.
“Whoa,” Larry stopped, “Why’s that?”
“She started seeing someone in Boston,” Greg looked away, afraid his eyes would reveal too much. A distant line of geese, black specks above the coastal ranges, flew south beneath the occasional puffed up cloud. “Said she’s in love with him.”
“When did’ja find out?”
“Yesterday. She wrote me a letter.”
“‘Dear John’,” Larry shook his head and stroked his beard, “That’s cold. And she was here for Christmas. You two’ve been together for a long time. Kinda thought it might last. I’m really sad to here it.”
“Yah, well,” Greg slammed back his welling tears, and started to walk again, steering toward the parking lot, around a bulbous bronze that vaguely resembled a voluptuous reclining female form, or else a Dali soft billiard game. “Glad it happened now, instead of when we got married and had kids or something. Anyway, I’ve got more important things to deal with. You heard about the riemanium stolen yesterday, right?”
“Yeh, they still haven’t found it,” Larry was still mulling over his friend’s newly shattered relationship.
“Well, I did,” Greg dropped his second surprise.
“Huh?” Larry grunted, not comprehending.
“The riemanium,” Greg smiled wanly, “I found it. Yesterday. On Foothill Scenic Drive near Mount Tam.”
“You’re shitting me?!?” Larry’s jaw dropped.
“Not at all. It’s in my trunk right now.”
The two crossed the remainder of the lawn, past a concrete monstrosity resembling a giant stalagmite of melted wax, to the parked Spitfire. Sure enough, when Greg opened the trunk, the gray case with its ten smaller containers and yellow warnings waited, wedged in next to the spare tire, nestled in blankets.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Larry exclaimed, clasped his head, and then glanced about to see that no one else was watching, “This thing is hot, and I don’t just mean radioactive. What the hell are you gonna do with it?”
“Don’t know,” Greg admitted, “Hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“Everybody is looking for this stuff,” Larry emphasized, still not believing his eyes. The cops, the FBI, everybody wants this pup. I bet there’s a reward out.”
“Probably. But couldn’t we do something a little more ‘creative’ than that with it?”
“Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Greg shrugged, “Maybe use it as a prop in a demo. Build it into a fake atomic bomb and scare the shit out of the powers-that-be. Something.”
“Yo!” Larry’s eyes brightened. “I just got a flash. Drive me to my car.”
Greg did, though his friend refused to let on his idea.
“Drive to my house,” Larry said, and backed his electrically converted white VW microbus out of its space.
Larry lived on the south side of town, across the tracks, in the three bedroom ranch-style house he had inherited with his parent’s death. He operated a large, central sensimilla core in his father’s old orchid greenhouse, experimental batches of African kief and pure indica in the 1950’s bomb shelter, a commissioned crop of Kajan in the basement, and cloned stocks of deep Jamaican, Hawaiian, Thai and Borneo bud in a sealed room inside the house. He used both conventional and hydroponic cultivation techniques. The house was ideally suited for Larry’s agricultural venture. Insulated by an acre and a half of land, it was backed against Driscoll Creek and a low set of forested hills, part of the Lomas Alta peak further south east. Larry had also selectively seeded those hills, entirely out-of-the-way places that might also support wild marijuana with not a lot of backup care. He intended to visit around harvest time next fall to see what had survived and what had not been discovered by hiker or cop, sort of his “offering to the gods” to spiritually protect his in-house operations.
Greg arrived well before Larry and did not bother to get out of the car. Instead, he enjoyed the pine and farm smell of Larry’s spread. His friend’s house was penetrated with massive security and jerry-rigged utilities. Larry tied into the Marin County power grid, then used a sophisticated subsystem of electrical regulation, storage and amplification to maximize its use. He supplemented this with solar cells and panels, two windmills, and unobtrusive
paddle wheel water generators when the creek ran high; all to minimize his visible use of power. The same with water; backed by rain catches, cisterns, and a seasonal, incremental diversion of the creek. He even vented off and stored the methane from his composting and human waste recovery unit which contributed to his fertilizer, using the methane to supplementally heat his crop to a ripe temperature.
Larry also maintained a far reaching security and surveillance system to guard his realm, consisting of a 24-hour compunet with a mainframe media server, video monitoring, trip wires, heat sensors, pressure pads, motion and pattern sensors, robotic surveillance insects, and backup gasoline generators. The spread included a mini-grove of oranges and one of walnuts, a few rows of healthy grape vines, plots of drip-irrigated French intensive agriculture abundant with vegetables, a rabbit hutch, a chicken coop, and an indoor/outdoor lily-dense fishpond stocked with edible trout, bass and catfish; legitimate farming, husbandry and aquaculture to camouflage his illegitimate crops. The whole setup supported his autonomy and peace of mind. An array of antennae and satellite dishes, a two-car garage outfitted to make auto repairs, and a decorative gazebo situated to conceal a recently built, underground warehouse stocked with additional supplies, filled out the picture. That Larry often rearranged and updated his interconnected security system kept Greg in his car until the dusty veedub pulled alongside.
“Get that pup. Wrap it in a blanket. 111 be out in a moment.” Larry ran off into the rambling one-story house.
Some time later, Larry ran back out, dressed in camo pants and laced-up Army combat boots, and carrying an instamatic.
“This way,” Larry gestured. He took off across his land, down and across a rocky, modestly full Driscoll Creek, and up into the hills. Greg lugged some sixty pounds of deadweight behind. The mocking rended brass caws of a murder of crows ricocheted among the sun dusted pines.
“Larry. I’d really like to know what this is all about,” Greg panted finally.
“Guess this is as good a place as any,” Larry glanced about.
He set the riemanium case framed by ferns against a tree, took a picture, opened its lid, took another picture, and turned the case to take yet another picture from a different angle.
“Here,” Larry handed Greg the camera while keeping the developing film. “Take a picture of the case, with my foot next to it. Another. Now another.”
Larry changed his footwork as Greg snapped away. Larry then laid out the six pictures, in various stages of development, on a nearby log.
“OK, now imagine the following ‘communique’,” Greg’s friend grinned. “We, the Ecotopian Liberation Front have expropriated sufficient riemanium from the fascist AmeriKKKan state to construct a nuclear weapon capable of devastating California’s San Francisco Bay Area. If the imperialist forces of the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa do not withdraw immediately from the revolutionary territories of southern Mexico, and if all political prisoners in AmeriKKKan jails are not immediately released, we will build and detonate this weapon in the city of San Francisco on May 1.’ Now, picture that xeroxed message superimposed over a color xerox of these pictures.”
Greg stood, stunned silent for long minutes, speechless from the audacity of Larry’s suggestion.
“We...we couldn’t do that!?!” Greg breathed, his voice decibels below his friend’s enthusiasm.
“Sure we could,” Larry’s grin turned Cheshire, and stretched into the absurd, “We might even be able to recruit some ASP heavies to back this little scheme.”
Greg’s thoughts expanded around Larry’s idea, and a small, dim image of Janet hovered about the edges of his imagination. “You’ll see,” Greg said to himself. “You’ll hear about me. You’ll want me back.”
ELEVEN
BBC World Service Special Report
“Modern Counterinsurgency: The Weapons of War”
BBC Reporter Nijal Thomas [1-13-2007]
(Electrostraca #: RNB/GM-113007-375-789-0376)
Exactly how arms and supplies flow into the Yucatan, and exactly how guerrillas of various organizations belonging to the ZLF move about the countryside, is critical information for the Pentagon. To this end the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in southern Mexico employs the latest in sensopic technologies, to directly gather what information it can on guerrilla military movements in the Yucatan. The Argus Net well illustrates the sophistication of this information collecting operation.
The Argus Net is delivered by cruise missile, one hundred thousand bundled sensopic sheaths to the largest package. Some three hundred meters above the ground the Argus payload mechanically fragments into a thousand million needle-sized sensing devices that pattern-spread across the terrain according to factors such as the angle of delivery, missile spin, and weather. A single Argus payload can blanket a maximum of 1,400 square kilometers, though smaller delivery packages and one’s designed to cover specific terrain, are also employed.
Each sensopic “stik,” as they are called, is shaped like a double pointed toothpick, only much smaller, and is composed primarily of carbon and silicon. Each is a basic, miniature computer, containing almost microscopic microchips and sensory “nerves,” thirty day power nodes and, in combination with other “stix,” radio transmission capabilities. These precision needles sometimes catch in vegetation, but most of the time they fall to the ground where their strict earth tones camouflage them.
Thus a subtle electronic net is dropped for a month, say, over the south eastern Mexican/Guatemalan border. The stix detect human and mechanical heat sources, the presence of certain airborne chemical compounds such as human urine and sweat as well as gasoline and motor oil, not to mention radio, microwave and laser signals. A satellite can receive the Net’s collective broadcast, and computers in the Pentagon can image up a map of human activity through the area from the data. This can then be superimposed on the known topography to build up clear patterns within weeks. The Pentagon evaluates this information in planning its military campaigns. Finally, the Argus Net can be used to guide in smart weapons, troop intervention or even carpet air strikes, all precisely targeted. Then, in forty-five days, the Net biodegrades.
The negative side to the Argus system, and indeed to all sensopic technologies, of course, is that the thousand million computer sensors, shaken across the Mexican jungles like so many divining straws, cannot distinguish between armed guerrillas and simple peasants. The U.S. counterinsurgency war drives the migration of civilian populations across borders, as does starvation, misery and economic opportunity. Even for trade and commerce, local peasants are required to travel different routes weekly, in hopes of outguessing American air power. But there are only so many ways across the land.
What is more, the ZLF guerrillas are fast becoming wise to ways of tricking such sensopic nets; hanging buckets of urine and motor oil along unused trails, setting off decoy radio transmissions, running car motors in deserted stretches of jungle, arranging controlled jungle burns, using EMP generators, and the like. Advances in counterinsurgency strategy, tactics and technology are therefore frequently matched by insurgent ingenuity.
TWELVE
Marcus parked in the Motel 6 parking lot at 5 p.m., the 1996 MitsuChrysler mini-wagon’s back filled with eight hastily packed suitcases. The motel’s aged sign hung off Main Street, in central Alabaster near the courthouse and the police station, and across the street from Union Park, a block from Alabaster State University. Gwen was not pleased at all. She was hungry, and while she had accepted her husband’s job proposal, she had not anticipated his hurry, particularly after Neal Emerson’s late morning delivery. What’s more, she did not like the motel.
“This looks a bit run down,” Gwen frowned, “I hope we’re not renting this just because of the price?”
“They have cottages in the back you can rent by the month,” Mark massaged his temples, “Neal and I rented here when we went fishing. When we were at Bridgeport. Stafford, Alpine and Kent Lakes are near here. So’s the Nicasio Reservoir. On
e bedroom cottages, so we’ll have some space and privacy. And, a private phone.”
“Do they have buses in this berg?” she wondered, glancing critically along the Main Street. She was an attractive older woman, silver hair styled short and cool green eyes now critically appraising their surroundings.
“I suppose they do,” he yawned, “We’re still in civilized Marin County.”
“Can we go back to Santa Clara tomorrow to get my car?” she asked.
“Yes Gwendalyn,” he looked over at his wife, “I hadn’t intended this to be a chore for you. More like a vacation.”
“A working vacation,” she pointed out. In fact, Marcus frequently employed his wife in his business, and if the truth were known, her skills had underpinned the success of his agency. “It’s just that your hurry to get here has been a little disconcerting.”
“I’m sorry dear,” he touched her hand, “I needed to get on this trail while it was fresh. Peregrine is here in Alabaster. I have a feeling he’s still in the area. And, even if he has gone, he was here last and well pick up his trail here.”
End Time Page 10