Be Nice

by David Portlock

  Brent and Mary Barber were in separate beds. Wallis slid the digi-cam from under his jacket and kneeled beside his father. “Pop? Hey, Pop?”

  His father slowly opened his eyes. Stunned, he coughed and cleared his throat.

  Wallis turned on the digi-cam. “Yeah, it’s me, Pop.”

  Janey’s mother, Irene, smiled from her hospital bed.

  Janey rubbed her forehead and kissed her on both cheeks. “Yeah, mama, it’s me, it’s Janey.”

  Irene tried to sit up. “So how…how you doin’, girl? And how’s my grandbaby doin’?”

  Janey held her mother’s hand. “It’s, uh…it’s doin’ good.”

  “Baby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t…mama can’t…”, she winced, holding back a tear, “mama, she can’t walk no more.”

  Wallis entered the room.

  Irene’s eyes brightened.

  Wallis sat at the end of her bed and turned on the digi-cam.

  A few minutes later, Wallis and Janey walked back to the reception desk.

  “They’re gonna die!” Janey said. “We can’t take `em with us—got-damn, they can’t even walk! Seein’ her like that, all beat on—”

  An anchorman’s voice boomed from the telescreen above the reception desk. “Because of the increasing civil unrest, the Be Nice scheduled field trip from California has been canceled.”

  A viddi played. Four bullet trains pulled into the remains of the Lowell station. Accompanied by an army of Brennan sec guards, Ms. Fallings greeted them. A group of fifty children hurried off the trains.

  “As you can see, Be Nice official, Janika Fallings, is informing the California Be Nice members of the tragedy that occurred just hours ago. Because of the class schedule on these trains, the field trip students were shielded from the internet. One can only imagine their horror at learning that many of their friends and fellow classmates were killed—”

  Janey shut off the telescreen and turned to Wallis. “You said we got `em. What’d you mean?”

  A line of Protect-and-Serves, shock wands at the ready, blocked San Vicente Blvd.

  High beams shined in the darkness. The Protect-and-Serves interlocked their arms as Big Larry’s SUV and thirty hogs approached.

  Big Larry drove down the middle of the road and broke the Protect-and-Serves’ line. The hogs, carrying two kids each, suddenly raced forward.

  Shock wands slashed through the officers, electrifying and beating them as the kids motored past.

  A third wave of kids on pedal bikes appeared; one kid pedaled, the other kid balanced on the spoke bars. The Protect-and-Serves were pummeled to the street.

  Frank started the first Water Town paddleboat as the kids pushed their pedal bikes and hogs into the ocean.

  Frank leaped from the paddleboat and onto another. He yelled to John Tom and Abe who were on the dock, “It’s easy! Just start `em and steer!”

  From the wheelhouse of a paddleboat, John Tom saluted as a gang of kids piled in behind him on the lower and upper decks.

  At the helm of another paddleboat full of kids, Abe steered away from the dock.

  Wallis and Janey arrived. Frank, Big Larry, and Big Larry’s crew were waiting. Wallis unhooked the hog’s selli from the gas tank and handed it and the digi-cam to Frank.

  Big Larry punched Wallis on the arm.

  Janey put her right hand over heart.

  The group recited, “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.”

  On San Vicente Blvd, Ms. Fallings and a squad of Brennan sec guards assisted the wounded Protect-and-Serves.

  In his private office, Mr. Brennan sat behind his desk and held a ragged Be Nice mask in his lap. A speaker was placed in front of him.

  Ms. Fallings’s voice crackled, “Protect-and-Serves got a call that a group of kids was spotted in Malibu! But it wasn’t Barber and Typermass, it was the other students!”

  Mr. Brennan poked his fingers through the eye holes of the Be Nice mask. “So where do you think they’re headed?”

  “One of the serves, said he thinks to the Santa Monica promenade!”

  “Call me back when you find out—”

  “Sir, you just had me send home twenty-five-hundred students, as well as Be Nice New Venice and Westwood. We might’ve been able to stop them—”

  “Ms. Fallings, you’re going to have to call me back.”

  A secretary broke in on the speaker, “Mr. Brennan? The LOC says half an hour.”

  Mr. Brennan didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Brennan?”

  He turned the ragged Be Nice mask inside out. He unfolded the faded label and saw his name, Johnny B., written in black magic marker.

  Ms. Fallings broke in, “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, we need to regroup! We still might have a chance to stop them—”

  Mr. Brennan laughed. “It looks like we’re in for a bit of trouble.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The LOC’s calling and I have to be on my best behavior.”

  “Sir, I don’t think—”

  “You have a marvelous evening.”

  The Water Town Queen paddleboat bumped into the lobby doors of the Sea Breeze Hotel. Frank, at the rear of the Queen, lowered a life raft into the water. Wallis, Janey, and Big Larry climbed in.

  Big Larry paddled the raft into the hotel lobby. He stopped at the escalators, where John Tom and Abe helped Wallis and Janey out. John Tom hugged them and led them up the escalator stairs.

  Bonfires burned in the corners of the main conference room. The kids, restless, gathered around them. They screamed when Wallis and Janey marched in.

  Frank and a group of the Hollywoodies worked on their laptops. They waved to Wallis from across the room.

  Wallis addressed the kids. A hundred sellies were hoisted above their heads. Wallis gave a thumbs up.

  A telescreen on the wall of Mr. Brennan’s office was bombarded with selli viddies of the kids as they celebrated in the Sea Breeze.

  An anchorman said, “In an astonishing twist of events, it has been revealed to us that Wallis Barber, Janey Typermass, and the Brennan students are, in fact, alive! Not only that, but they posted this viddi online moments ago!”

  Viddi of Wallis’s father on the telescreen. Wallis’s voice was heard in the background. “Okay, Pop, just tell everybody what happened.”

  His father looked into the camera. “They—they stomped me when I was on the line.”

  “Did me and Janey rob you? Did we hurt you?”

  “They lied. Be Nice is bad! They lied to everyone! You and Janey, you’re both good kids!”

  Viddi of Janey’s mother. Janey said off camera, “What’d they do to you at work, and later when they brought you here?”

  Irene looked into the camera. “They hurt me, hurt me bad. They made me—made me say bad things.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  Irene winced. “Beat me. They beat me on—on my back and on my legs. Now mama can’t,” a tear on her cheek, “mama can’t walk.”

  Wallis aimed the camera at Janey. Janey, who was wearing her latex mask, scowled and said, “Look what Be Nice did! Look what they did to my mom for no reason!”

  The viddi switched to the Sea Breeze conference room. The kids who had blue ski masks were wearing them. Other kids had ripped apart blue pieces of cloth, made eye holes, and had tied them around their heads.

  Janey put her right hand over her heart. The entire room recited, “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 joined her. The
camera focused on him. “When things ain’t goin’ right, when everything’s goin’ wrong, what do we have to do?”

  The kids hollered, “We burn it down!”

  “When Be Nice lies to us, what do we have to do?”

  “WE BURN IT DOWN!”

  “When some people get the good shit, and you don’t get nothin’ but shit, what do you have to do?”

  “BURN IT DOWN!”

  Janey yelled, “No more stomp stomp, no more hurtin’ people, no more lies! What happens if that doesn’t happen?”

  “WE BURN IT DOWN!”

  “And?”

  “WE START OVER! AND NEXT TIME…WE DO IT RIGHT!”

  “Who are we?”

  “THE BLUE!”

  “WHO ARE WE?”

  “THE BLUE, THE BLUE, THE BLUE, THE BLUE!”

  The viddi cut to the beatings of John Tom, Becky, and Abe on the bullet train, and concluded with Mr. Dylon murdering Pete.

  The anchorman appeared over the images. With a solemn look, he said, “That was the scene at the Sea Breeze Hotel in Santa Monica moments ago. It’s open rebellion and civil unrest on a scale not witnessed in more than a hundred years.”

  Mr. Brennan covered a smile with his hand.

  His secretary’s voice warbled over the speaker, “Sir, I have the LOC on line two.”

  A metallic voice, the voice of a bot followed and said, “This is Shelby bot one. Recent data confirms unrest in the following areas—”

  “Yes,” Mr. Brennan said. “I’m well aware of the recent unrest. Do you have any suggestions on the best way to counteract it?”

  “I have communicated with industry bots two through thirty-nine. Data confirms unrest will eventually result in loss of production, which could lead to starvation for three percent of the world’s population. This number will increase exponentially—”

  “Do you have any suggestion on how to counteract the unrest?”

  “All news, sports, entertainment, and online media corps have met. They concluded if the unrest is allowed to continue, they will have no option but to reevaluate their involvement with Be Nice.”

  “Can you answer my question?”

  “Industry bots were designed to produce, they were designed to operate—”

  “I know what you were designed to do. You run the factories, you run the industries, and you run them efficiently. Now, tell me, do you have any ideas concerning—”

  “Bots one through thirty-nine, our job is to—”

  “We need a course of action.”

  Silence.

  “Do you have any suggestions that might help?”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

  The call disconnected.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kids from twelve to nineteen, armed with crude weapons and backpacks bulging with supplies, swarmed the paddleboat dock. They click-clacked on their sellies, snapped photos, and filmed viddies. The Sea Breeze standoff had become a happening, an event; blurbs, blogs, opinion polls, and updates beamed to every site on the planet.

  John Tom arrived at the dock in an empty paddleboat. He was greeted by enthusiastic shouts of support. Dozens of SNACK-O-RAMA ROM bags filled with bottled water, canned goods, flashlights, and T-shirts, anything useful to survive the, now three-week long standoff, were passed over the crowds and thrown to the lower decks. Be Nice officials had not responded to The Blue’s last transmission. Their silence was clear.

  Every night, the hordes of kids and young adults left the dock and returned to their living pods. Parents had stopped taking their meds weeks ago, but continued to work the W Lines; bills still had to be paid, regardless.

  It was the same around the country as the standoff wore on. The city of Atlanta, Georgia, was said to be the norm, the frame of mind the country had settled into. Fifty-seven percent of the city had become med free within two weeks of The Blue’s first transmission. The remaining forty-three percent of the city willingly complied with Be Nice authorities. Their children had had a taste of mom and dad not under the influence of the meds, and they didn’t like it. Be Nice masks were proudly worn in the districts that had been sealed off from the rest of the city.

  Mr. Brennan and Ms. Fallings looked at the bandaged face of Mr. Dylon on the conference room telescreen. He was in a hospital room, lightly sedated and grossly battered, but alive. His eyes were visible through layers of gauze and webs of plastic breathing tubes. A bot voice served as his own; his throat slid up and down as he talked, his lips didn’t move.

  “I’m sure the LOC is in panic mode,” he said.

  Ms. Fallings remarked, “But we’re surviving. And also doing better than we originally anticipated.”

  Mr. Dylon coughed up a wad of phlegm; it was sucked away by his breathing tubes. He cleared his throat. “Three weeks…that’s nothing. Things are going to change. You watch and—”

  “Be Nice has reported a stalemate,” Mr. Brennan said. “Our forces and their forces now seem to be—”

  Ms. Fallings firmly touched his leg, prompting him to keep quiet.

  “So get to it. What do you want?” Mr. Dylon asked, a hint of acid in his metallic voice.

  Ms. Fallings said, “As you can see, I made it into the conference rooms. So how would you like to do the same?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Blue forces have control of the L.A. basin, but San Fran and San Diego, they’re still with us.

  “In other words, you have them surrounded.”

  “Yes. And, despite your earlier attempts to subdue Barber and Typermass being turned against us, I’d like to offer you a chance to redeem yourself.”

  Mr. Dylon coughed up another wad of phlegm.

  Tyler checked the pickup’s speedometer and accelerated to 120. In the passenger seat, Joe Joe cleaned and reloaded his thirty-eight.

  Behind them, a caravan of Natives, driving pickup trucks and hogs, whipped up a veil of prairie dust.

  “Still don’t know how you did it,” Tyler said.

  Joe Joe shoved his gun in his pants. “Casino revs are down by almost seventy percent. No money, no rezes.”

  “I think we shoulda called ahead. At least let them know we were—”

  “It’s called the element of surprise for a reason.”

  The lobby of the Sea Breeze Hotel was blocked by two paddleboats. The decks of the boats were stocked with crates of Molotov cocktails and other homemade incinerates. The escalator stairs, shielded by scavenged hotel doors, acted as a last-ditch barricade.

  The main conference room was powered by used car batteries and solar panels. It was the nucleus, the epicenter, the war room. Laptops and newspads had been set at work stations inside partitioned cubicles where kids checked out the social sites and the newsfeeds and printed out daily reports—all of which were fed to Frank.

  Frank worked in a cloister of donated telescreens, computer screens, and flatscreen TVs.

  Chas, his boyfriend, made sure he ate twice a day.

  Wallis and Janey approached the fortress of info-tude.

  “So far, we’ve remained in the plus column,” Frank said. “The nation and world polls have us up by seven, but the stock boys, they told me the market’s leveled off. Now here’s the crazy thing: we’re seeing profits across every single sector. I mean, you could play the market before, but the gains were somewhat lacking. As my father used to say, it was nothing to write home about.” He took a bite of a synth hot dog. “Okay, we cut the oldies’ meds, which means we woke a lot of the over-thirty-fives up, so Be Nice is using that. They rescinded price controls, opened the commodities markets—”

  Janey sighed. “They’re lettin’ people make more money.”

  “And, on that joyous note…we are in the black. Money’s flooding into the bank accounts we set up. Be Ni
ce Tokyo, Dubai, they’ve recently committed over—”

  “You mean, Blue Tokyo, Blue Dubai.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right. And they’ve been generous.”

  Wallis tapped a solar panel on Frank’s desk. “So where’re we at with these?”

  “I’ve got John Tom and Abe installing solar panels on every floor. We should be independent and at full power in a few days.”

  “What about the shitters?”

  “Yes…the, uh…the bathrooms…I have John Tom and Abe working on them too.”

  Big Larry walked over to Wallis and Janey. “We need to talk.”

  John Tom, pushing solar panels in a shopping cart, and Abe, carrying an armful of plastic tubing, turned the corner at the end of the corridor.

  “Yo! Wal!” John Tom said.

  Wallis, Janey, and Big Larry stopped at the entrance of the second conference room.

  “Abe and me, we got the solar panels in place. We should be up to speed in a few days.”

  “That’s ice,” Wallis replied. “Good work.”

  “Hey, so what’s up with Frank?”

  “What?”

  “For real,” Abe said. “Why’s he givin’ me and J.T. orders like he’s the big honcho all of a sudden?”

  “Wal, I swear, he’s got me an’ Abe doin’ all the bullshit work, while him and his people—”

  Janey jabbed her fingers into John Tom and Abe’s chests. “Y’all do whatever he says.”

  Abe dropped the plastic tubing he was carrying on the floor. “Eff that! He’s got us puttin’ all these tubes in peeps’ rooms so they can shit and piss out in the ocean! That ain’t our job! Him an’ his fag-ass crew—”

  John Tom pushed Abe aside and said, “Wal. Just cuz Frank likes to suck dicks, it doesn’t mean he can’t do any hard work.”

  “Frank’s smart,” Big Larry said. “But you two, you ain’t.”

  John Tom clenched his fists. “What’d you say?”

  Janey moved between them. “Nah, John, forget it. You wasn’t smart before this mess went down, and you ain’t no smarter now. Maybe if you’da listened up in class, you wouldn’t have to do the bullshit work.” She picked up the plastic tubes and handed them to Abe. “You two wanna eat, then you do what you’re told. Now go fix the shitters.”