Ms. Fallings sank into Mr. Beams’s chair.
“This is what Be Nice is. This is what Be Nice has become. A way to keep order until the selected could be—”
The sound of a door being unlocked off camera.
Mr. Brennan placed the selli against his leg.
The sound of approaching spiked heels.
Mr. Brennan’s words became garbled. He said, “Well, what do you think is more appropriate? Et tu, Ms. Fallings…or…why?”
The spiked heels came closer.
“I’m afraid you won’t have the pleasure.”
The sound of rushing air.
The selli cut off.
Silence in the stadium.
Wallis and Janey walked out of Mr. Beams’s office.
Sitting on the floor in the hallway, Frank looked up from his laptop. “I can’t believe it! But Be Nice is backing off, they stopped fighting! It looks like they’re standing down!”
“Frank, open the gates,” Wallis said.
The kids remained motionless in their seats as the stadium gates parted.
Still holding their microphones, Wallis and Janey entered the stadium and stood in the middle of the foot-soc field.
Silence.
Janey raised her microphone. “Be Nice…they lied to all of us.”
Silence.
“So let’s not be nice anymore…let’s be mad instead.”
Silence.
“I said…let’s be mad instead!”
Some of the kids shifted in their seats.
“Did you hear me? Are you people deaf? I said, let’s be mad!”
Hundreds of kids traded looks.
“Be mad! Be mad! Be mad!”
A few kids cried out, “Be mad!”
“THAT’S RIGHT! BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD!”
The crowd soon joined in. “Be Mad! Be Mad! Be Mad!”
Wallis lifted his microphone. “BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD!”
The crowd pumped their fists. “BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD!”
Ms. Fallings went to the office window.
Big Larry shouted, “Be mad! Be mad! Be mad!”
Frank checked his selli. He smiled at Joe Joe and Tyler. “The LOC, it just sent out a message! They said they want everyone to go home, they said everything’s going to be fine!” He aimed the selli camera into the stadium.
“BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD!”
Joe Joe and Tyler, expressionless, moved beside Ms. Fallings.
“BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD! BE MAD!”
The stadium shuddered from stomping war boots.
Milan burned.
It was followed by Beijing.
And Tanzania.
And later London.
There were riots in Tokyo.
Paris went up.
And then Moscow.
Manhattan Prime burned above the waterline.
Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Philadelphia followed.
And then Ontario and Prague and Berlin and Stockholm.
A few weeks later, when young people wearing Be Mad masks gathered in the millions on the city streets, the fires stopped.
A Brennan chopper hovered over downtown Los Angeles. Coils of smoke spiraled in the air and blanketed the city. Smoldering tires, burnt out living pods, flipped over electric cars, and gutted office buildings stretched up and down the coast.
Mr. Dylon, in his hospital bed, was secured in the chopper’s passenger cabin. IV drips and monitors were locked to the bed railings; his monitors beeped and pulsed.
Across from him, Ms. Fallings fastened her gaze on the city. “It’s going to be exactly the same,” she said. “Nothing’s going to change.”
“Only the lettering on the masks,” Mr. Dylon replied.
“I remember saying I thought there was something special about them. Something I was missing. There wasn’t. They were just two kids who weren’t scared.”
“The weight of trying to maintain order is going to bring them down sooner or later. Freedom can be a dangerous thing. You watch and see.”
Ms. Fallings closed the window blind. “A lottery.”
“What?”
“A national lottery to choose who can leave, and who has to stay.”
“And what will that do?”
“If that lottery was, let’s say, found to be rigged in favor of—”
“Nah, they ain’t stupid,” a voice said from the rear of the chopper. “At least they ain’t that stupid.”
Abe sipped a can of Dawg and put his feet up.
Mr. Dylon pounded his hospital bed. “Just bring me another beer.”
Abe popped the tab on a can of Dawg, handed it to Mr. Dylon, and said, “Whatever I can do to help.”
Brent and Mary Barber reclined in lounge chairs on the balcony of their hotel room. They held each other and watched the ocean splash in and out of the lobbies and reception areas of the adjacent hotels and office buildings. Their room at the Sea Breeze was spacious. Wallis’s artwork adorned the walls. There were dozens of drawings of superheroes and supervillains; The Mighty Morphon held center stage.
Irene Typermass did her hair. She finished primping and curling and, with a satisfied sigh, hobbled out of the bathroom; her new mech-crutches made it possible.
Her bedroom was the same size as Brent and Mary’s. Her belongings, as many as she could bring from her pod, had been neatly arranged throughout the living room.
Drawings of streaking comets and burning planets were tacked on the walls. She would have to buy frames for them later, if she could find frames in the black market shops that had sprung up on the Promenade.
Wallis and Janey exited their suite. Tyler, Big Larry, and Frank waited for them at the fire exit stairwell.
Paddleboats chugged in and out of the Sea Breeze lobby, loaded with bottled water and food stuffs. A few ferried kids and their parents back and forth to the Promenade.
The Sea Breeze lobby had been cleaned and scrubbed. The colorful floral patterns on the shampooed carpeting bloomed. Kids polished rusted chairs, banisters, and doorknobs, and some worked to restore the lobby furniture.
Joe Joe joined Wallis, Janey, Tyler, Big Larry, and Frank in the main conference room.
Wallis and the group gathered at a long, oval conference table. Twelve telescreens had been mounted from the ceiling. The eight young, ethnic faces peered from the screens, along with the African investor, the Asian investor, the Indian investor, and the Arab investor.
Janey picked up her notebook from the conference table and said, “Good morning.”
The twelve faces nodded their greetings to her.
Janey placed 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.”
Everyone around the table and the eight ethnic faces raised their fists and said, “Be Mad!”
The foreign investors conferred with unseen advisors.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Janey said, as she opened her notebook and looked up to the twelve telescreens. “So what’s on the schedule for today?”
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