Be Nice

by David Portlock

  Ms. Fallings impatiently pressed her implant.

  The old woman continued, “We lived a long time, a lot longer than fifty-five. Even when they cut off our health care. A lot longer. That means we’re special.”

  The old man coughed. “And-and we always take our meds.”

  The drone of an incoming chopper heralded a rescue from the boredom.

  The Brennan chopper touched down in a bleak, rural neighborhood. Ms. Fallings jumped on board. As the chopper lifted into the clouds, the pilot handed her a selli. She made a call, waited for an answer, and said, “I got away.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mr. Brennan studied the faces of the investors and exhaled a wiry plume of cigarette smoke.

  His black-suited assistants buzzed around him, working furiously on sellies and palm-sized infopads.

  One of them said, “The viddi, sir, it’s going viral.”

  A second said, “The disturbance, so far, appears to be minimal.”

  A third said, “Sir, the train seems to be headed for the Lowell station in Santa Monica. It should arrive in twenty-seven minutes.”

  The collection of investors conferred with unseen advisers.

  Mr. Brennan motioned to one of his assistants for more coffee.

  The African investor asked, “How do you plan to put an end to this?”

  The Asian investor said, “They’re on magnetic rails. Why don’t you cut the power?”

  The Indian investor smiled. “Yes. Shut down the power.”

  With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, Mr. Brennan focused on the Arab.

  “So they let one hundred-plus children and several of their teachers go,” the Arab investor said.

  Mr. Brennan blew on his coffee. “One of my former therapists, Janika Fallings, was with them. She reported that they—”

  The African investor interrupted, “If you stop the train, the media, they will cover everything.”

  The Arab investor said, “If there is to be a standoff, it is better to have it where you are in control. I would let them enter Santa Monica—”

  The Asian investor read from a selli screen. “New York and Illinois are reporting mild unrest in Manhattan Prime and Upper Chicago. The internet, you have to shut it down.”

  Mr. Brennan’s eyes narrowed. “If we did that...it would reinforce the notion that everything they showed on that viddi of theirs was true.”

  “Yes, yes,” the African investor said. “He’s quite right.”

  Mr. Brennan buttoned his suit jacket. “The train will be allowed to arrive safely in Santa Monica. We won’t try to stop it. Our publicists will then report to the media that we agree with them. We will agree to the corruption, the graft, and the unhealthy elements that have, apparently, infested the Be Nice organization. In effect, we will make these unruly children heroes.”

  The African investor remained silent.

  The Asian investor and the Indian investor were unsure.

  The Arab investor said, “Once we have them in custody, we must follow with a thorough cleansing of Be Nice.”

  “Which is what we started,” Mr. Brennan said. “From the people’s perspective, we had already begun to ferret out The Blue.”

  One of Mr. Brennan’s assistants whispered in his ear, “Sir, we tried to make contact with the train, but they’ve cut off all communications.”

  The Santa Monica Lowell station was closed. The janitor, a yellow-eyed, old man wearing ear buds, quietly waxed and polished the floor with a buffing machine.

  Ms. Fallings led a contingent of Brennan sec guards and a mixture of Be Nice Anaheim and San Diego into the terminal.

  The old man winced as war boot heels streaked across the floor.

  A spotlight shined from outside. Ms. Fallings ordered her contingent to gate 27.

  She stepped out of the terminal and looked into the sky.

  News choppers jockeyed for position.

  Ms. Fallings spoke into her selli, “The media’s already here.”

  “Very good,” Mr. Brennan said from the other end. “And Mr. Dylon and Ms. Garner are alive. They’re both in recoup. They should be one hundred percent in a few months.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Are your men in position?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When they arrive, I want you to parade the children in front of the networks. Show they’re unharmed, that they’re safe, and then I want them arrested and taken to the Learning Center.”

  The Brennan sec guards fanned out behind Ms. Fallings. The two Be Nice groups were stationed in the gate 27 waiting room.

  It happened calmly. The Be Nice Anaheim members put away their sellies, removed their masks, and exited the station.

  Ms. Fallings and the Brennan sec guards were alerted by boot heels plodding on the waxed floor.

  The San Diego Be Nice members didn’t move.

  At a loss, Ms. Fallings looked at them. “Where do they think they’re…?” She stopped.

  San Diego Be Nice blankly stared at her.

  A Be Nice official, wearing a black suit and a yellow and red striped tie, popped up on the telescreens in the bullet train and said, “Wallis Barber and Janey Typermass, former Be Nice members, they exemplify the qualities that Be Nice stringently believes in and admires. After extensive research at the highest levels, Be Nice HQ has concluded that their accusations of impropriety, graft, and widespread corruption within the organization…have merit. Be Nice now asks Mr. Barber and Ms. Typermass and the members of their group to return to Santa Monica at once.” He smiled. “Wallis, Janey, won’t you and the others come home and join with Be Nice in the fight for freedom?”

  On the bullet train, the kids turned from their telescreens.

  Wallis and Janey stood next to them in the aisles.

  Wallis said, “You all heard that. They said they want us to come home. They want us to quit. You know what that means?” He raised a fist and yelled, “It means they’re scared! It means we’re winning!”

  The kids jumped out of their seats.

  John Tom and Abe marched up and down the aisles.

  Wallis caught Frank’s expression.

  Frank wasn’t happy.

  Sitting in the middle of the conference car, Janey scribbled in a notebook. Wallis and Frank talked in the last row of seats.

  “We’ll arrive at the Palisades station in three to four minutes,” Frank said, “but Be Nice Los Angeles was most likely called back, as well as New Venice and Westwood.”

  “So what are you thinkin’?”

  “Well, in case Be Nice has traps planned for us at every station, I think we need another move.”

  “What kind of a move?”

  “I’m not sure…but it has to be something they won’t expect.”

  Wallis thought for a second. “All right, I’m on it.”

  Frank exited the conference car.

  Wallis walked up to Janey and sat beside her. She rested her head on his shoulder and smoothed a wrinkled page in her notebook. “Baby, tell me what you think.”

  Wallis eyed her notebook.

  “Be Nice, they have a pledge, right? I figured we should have one too.”

  “You wrote us a pledge?”

  “And you better not laugh.”

  Wallis kissed the palm of her hand. “Let me hear it.”

  Janey read aloud from her notebook, “The sky: the only thing that matters. The heart: the only thing that’s real. The blue: the color of the new day, the color of our collective spirit, the color of our future.”

  Wallis looked at the pledge. “Our collective spirit?”

  “I was thinkin’ about Joe Joe. Remember what he said?” She closed the notebook and sighed. “I was never an artsy like you.”

  “What?”

  “You,
you’re the one with artsy talent. It was never me. I just did it cuz you liked it.”

  Wallis held her close.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m good.” She thought to herself and said, “Damn, if Be Nice had just left us the eff alone, none of this would’ve—”

  “Right. And we’d be regular. We’d be nobodies.”

  “I thought we were gonna be supah famous.”

  “Girl, we are supah famous. We def got our wish.” He opened Janey’s notebook and reread the pledge. “Hold on a sec.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just thought of somethin’.”

  Janey followed him as he ran to the engineer’s control booth.

  The engineer jumped in surprise. “We’re…we’re almost there.”

  Wallis grabbed his hand and pulled it away from the controls. “Change of plans.”

  Tyler drank in a roadside watering hole. He lipped a can of Dawg beer and viewed a telescreen set above the bar. Media choppers had spotted the Nation Star Line train; excited newsmen yelled over a bird’s-eye view of the train as it raced toward Santa Monica.

  Ms. Fallings, the Brennan sec guards, and Be Nice San Diego were waiting at platform 27.

  The Nation Star Line train was two hundred yards away and closing.

  Ms. Fallings took a step back from the platform.

  The train didn’t slow down.

  “It’s too fast,” Ms. Fallings said. “Mother-I fucked—” she whirled around to the sec guards.

  The train picked up speed.

  Ms. Fallings ordered the sec guards and Be Nice San Diego into the station.

  On the bar telescreen, the Nation Star Line train kept coming.

  Tyler fell off his bar stool. “Oh, hell no! Get the eff outta here!”

  In disbelief, Mr. Brennan and the foreign investors watched on their telescreens.

  Neighborhoods as far away as Beverly Hills and East Los Angeles heard the impact. It was a low, rumbling growl, like a sudden clap of thunder.

  The Nation Star Line’s aluminum hull collapsed, vaporizing, as it rammed into the train bumpers, and crashed into, and continued through, platform 27. A jumble of cars ripped through the terminal and smashed through the waiting rooms, the stores, the bars, and the viddi-game arcade.

  Outside, in the parking lot, Ms. Fallings and her men tried to take cover as what was left of the train skidded toward them. Flaming aluminum, wires, passenger seats, chairs, and train controls tangled together. An explosion erupted from inside the terminal: a gas main torn out in the food court.

  Ms. Fallings and the group were blasted to the street as a white hot mushroom cloud of gas expanded above the station.

  The light of the explosion from the bar telescreen illuminated Tyler’s face. He remembered what Wallis had said. “You’re gonna see some things soon. Some real big things. Don’t you believe any of it.”

  Mr. Brennan and his assistants were speechless.

  The foreign investors disconnected their telescreens.

  The kids went ballistic as the telescreens on the bullet train showed images of the destruction.

  “Eff, yeah! Mother-I fucked you!” John Tom screamed.

  “Okay, when we get there,” Wallis said to Big Larry and Frank, “I’m counting on you two to make sure everyone gets to Water Town.”

  Janey put her right hand over her heart. “The sky: the only thing that matters. The heart: the only thing that’s real. The blue: the color of the new day, the color of our collective spirit, the color of our future.”

  The kids put their right hands over their hearts.

  Janey repeated the pledge.

  The kids recited every line.

  Janey finished and said, “The Blue!”

  The kids replied, “THE BLUE!”

  The bullet train pulled into the train concourse of the Malibu mall.

  The kids crept through the first floor and up the escalator stairs.

  The glass front doors of the sports outlet had been repaired.

  Wallis hurled another garbage can at them.

  The kids grabbed shirts and jackets and baseball bats and as many blue ski masks as they could find.

  Big Larry and Be Nice Denver stole dozens of new shock wands.

  On the first floor, John Tom and Abe kicked down the doors to the FOOD FOOD FOOD COURT.

  With everyone carrying at least one bag of groceries, Wallis and Janey led the group to the WHEELS & REC CHALET. There were over two hundred pedal bikes and thirty hogs displayed in the showroom.

  Frank pressed his face to the front door and said to Wallis, “We needed another move, something they wouldn’t expect, nicely done.”

  A stream of pedal bikes and hogs snaked out of the rear exit of the rec chalet. John Tom, Abe, and Frank, on gold and chrome hogs, took the lead.

  Wallis yelled from the parking lot, “Those hogs, they got enough charge to make it! Make sure you dump everything when you get there!”

  Mr. Brennan finished his seventh cup of coffee.

  Back on their telescreens, the investors conferred with unseen advisers.

  The Arab shifted to Mr. Brennan. “It has been decided. After the recent unrest, we are going to suspend our investments in the Midwest and Southwest building projects—”

  Mr. Brennan stated plainly, “That’s unfortunate…and rather unwise.”

  Ms. Fallings appeared on the conference room telescreen. The Nation Star Line wreckage burned behind her.

  Mr. Brennan kept his cool. He looked into his coffee cup and said, “They weren’t on the train.”

  The investors conferred with their advisers.

  “It was a decoy. They weren’t on the train that crashed. Right now, those kids, all two hundred of them, they’re running. They’re running home at this very moment. The wreck at the station was meant as a statement, and it was also meant to give them time to escape.”

  The Asian investor said, “Barber and Typermass have outwitted any and all attempts to subdue them.”

  “And your point is what exactly?”

  “They seem to be smarter than you give them credit for.”

  Mr. Brennan’s assistants ran into the conference room. They breathlessly read from their sellies. “It’s at two million hits! The viddi’s gone ultra-viral! Madrid Be Nice! Paris Be Nice! Johannesburg, Moscow, Helsinki, Atlanta! Philadelphia! Reno! Infighting! Fires, property damage!”

  The African investor yelled, “This is far from being in control of the situation!”

  Mr. Brennan yelled back, “And until we hear from the LOC, it is business as usual! Gentlemen, they’re just children! There’s no way they can possibly—”

  The Arab investor’s face filled his telescreen. “If you hear from the League of Corporations, call us, but our investments in America, without the assurances of Be Nice control, are on hold.”

  The four telescreens disconnected.

  Mr. Brennan knocked his coffee cup to the floor, shattering it. “Ms. Fallings, find them! Do whatever it takes! Use sec guards and the Protect-and-Serves, but you find them!”

  He clicked Ms. Fallings off the conference room telescreen and turned on the news.

  An anchorman exclaimed, “…the social networks are reporting the disaster at the Santa Monica station was everything from a suicide pact, to an accident, to murder sanctioned by—”

  Mr. Brennan switched off the telescreen. As he made his way out of the conference room, one of his assistants saw him smile.

  The hog raced down the elevated PCH. It darted right, across the dozen lanes, and exited in the Malibu hills. Wallis let the bike coast.

  He turned on the solar engine. A few minutes later, the hog winded into a small town square. The markets, stores, and offices were closed; the streets were empty.

  “Be Nice L.A., New
Venice, Malibu, they’re gonna call `em back,” Janey said.

  “We’ll be in Water Town before they know what’s up.”

  “So what are we doin’? Why’d we leave—”

  “Tyler said we should go see our folks.”

  “See our folks?”

  Wallis steered to the side of the road. He pointed across the street to a group of ambulances parked in front of a dimly lit building. A sign read MEDICAL CENTER.

  “Be Nice stomped `em on the line. The only med center close by is right here in Malibu.”

  “But, baby, we don’t have time—”

  “I got an idea.”

  The medical center was quiet. Two male orderlies, dressed in white, sat at the reception desk, engrossed by a program on a 60-inch telescreen.

  Wallis and Janey rushed through the front entrance.

  Surprised, the orderlies received shock wands to their throats.

  Wallis motioned to a laptop on the reception desk.

  As Janey sat in front of the laptop, a Be Nice official delivered a news report on the telescreen. “Deception now seems to be the modus operandi of Wallis Barber and Janey Typermass.”

  Viddi of the train wreckage.

  “Not only did they deceive the nation and the world into believing there was a cancer spreading within the ranks of Be Nice, but they also deceived over two hundred children on a bullet train…and slaughtered them in an apparent suicide pact.”

  “Seriously?” Janey said.

  Wallis kissed her. “It’s okay. We got `em.”

  “We got `em? What do you—”

  “I said, it’s okay.” He pointed to the laptop.

  Janey typed and pulled up a list of patient names and room numbers.

  They rounded a corner at the end of the hallway.

  A Brennan sec guard was asleep on an old couch.

  Wallis activated his shock wand, slipped around the corner, and shocked him into a deeper sleep.

  Wallis entered one room, Janey entered another room across the hall.