The night air is damp and chill, but usual for autumn in northern California. Nothing stirs so that the absence of moving air creates a soundless void, interrupted by the occasional noise of urban traffic not far away. There are a few ornamental lamps and lit bollards along the narrow drives and pathways, and they produce a chiaroscuro relief on trees, shrubs and monuments.
Megan Palmer eases her back against a stone still warm from an earlier sun. She likes the way the light plays on the vegetation, the trees especially, where the ghostly up-lighting traces along individual trunks and limbs and reflects back from the undersides of bunches of leaves.
This place has a kind of magic for her, where she can be graveyard girl, enveloped by mystery. She wears sandals and can feel the cool, slightly too tall grass on the sides of her feet as she moves them about. There is the brush of an occasional insect on her arm, or leg, or neck, but she barely notices.
She imagines herself to be Dorothy Gale, a simple farm girl without a thought in her head except for her mischievous dog. She is filled with champaign wishes and caviar dreams. She is back, back in LA in her head. This is where she wants to be. She was there once. Not all that long ago.
A ringtone ushers from her bag, once and then again. She picks the bag up and takes out an electronic pad, a tangled earpiece coming with it. It’s so quiet here in the cemetery that she decides to use the earpiece, although clearly there is no one else around. She touches the pad a few times and is rewarded with the sound of a friend’s voice on the other end.
“Megan!”
The voice is joined by an image on the pad.
“Raven, where are you?”
“I’m in Minsk.”
“What? Where?”
“Belarus.”
“Geezus! What are you doing there?”
“Nothing much.” She pauses, signifying that that could not be further from the truth.
Raven’s face is replaced by a headache inducing blur which resolves into the view of an intersection crowded with jacketed people and four ambulances sitting askew. It’s nighttime, still, in Belarus and suddenly she notices that there are an awful lot of hardhats being worn by the local gentry, orange, white, every kind. And lots of surgical masks, most white, some blue, some with folds, some in molded shapes, all kinds, intended to hide identity. It must be very cold because everybody has something on their head, a hat, a hood, a stocking cap, something.
There must be thousands, tens of thousands of tightly packed people within the viewfinder, forming a great crowd ringed about by old, gray buildings, one of which is clearly a church, and here and there bunches of leafless trees. Dawn is just beginning to show in the sky behind the trees. Stanchions of large street lights stand nearby but the power has been turned off by the authorities. The only light comes from a man standing on top of one of the ambulances, and he holds up a fiery torch that creates bright magnesium light. He raises the torch high above his head as he shouts at the people. Another man in a mask stands to his rear, also on top of the ambulance, surveying the crowd, seemingly protecting the man bearing the torch. People stand near the ambulance and hold up devices to record the event.
Here and there Megan can see a flag but she can’t make out what they represent. Someone has a cardboard sign that says something in black Cyrillic characters, which are also meaningless to her. The man’s voice is commanding but she can’t understand anything he is saying. It’s probably something about this being the dawn of a new day, she thinks. And then he begins to sing, the crowd quickly joining in. A protest song maybe, or the national anthem, she doesn’t know.
The screen undergoes another blur and Raven comes back into view, a four story windowless, burnt out building can be seen behind her.
“You’re at a protest!”
Raven has a streak of violet on the left side of her hair. It is shoulder length and is held in place by an elastic band that is bright and shiny.
“You really don’t see the news.”
“Thank God! Are you ok?”
“Sure sweetie!”
She hears others nearby, young women, speaking excitedly in another language. There is more blurring as the image on the screen flies around.
“Gotta go! Gotta Raaaaave!”
And Raven’s gone, leaving a silent, blank screen behind.
To Raven as far as Megan can tell it is all about worldwide conflict with governments everywhere who ride a tide of illiberalism while barely keeping afloat on an ocean of sovereign debt. The mechanisms of state power have become so powerful and so encompassing that a new kind of social control is being exercised.
But for Raven there is a network of the young, disaffected, and rebellious seeking transparency and freedom expression. Whether they sprout a V for Vendetta or a Guy Fawkes mask, sing outrageous songs and do outrageous things like Pussy Riot, they fight the actions of oppressive or overreaching governments. They have allied themselves with libertarians and the hacktivist group Anonymous, fighting back with rocks, bats and fire bombs while singing their national anthems, only to be attacked by stun guns and grenades, truncheons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannon.
Raven’s world has grown increasingly rigid and sclerotic. Democratic change has been unable to take place. Organs of central control have accumulated too much power to be politically challenged in any conventional way, and have been careful to disguise their power from the publics that they once served but which now serve them. Government open to its people, once upon a time an assurance of liberty, no longer can be counted on to exist. The world ossifies and turns necrotic with wealth and power concentrated at the top.
Chapter 8
On Fire Page 7