Most Revolutionary - Chapter Eight
The Battle Of The Schoolground
Previously: Sabia confronts President Silver who loses control of her temper and smashes her campaign manager Ellen Lin in the face. Under threat from Sabia, Silver reads the demands for a better world. Sabia visits convicted ally Jenna and urges her to flee her prison sentence.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY - A SERIALIZED NOVEL
Stunned bewilderment. The news hits the capital like a bomb. President Silver is alive. Ellen Lin too.
Hostage. Ransom. Held no one knows where. The demands are as if from another world.
Secret Service Director William Kingsley stands in front of TV reports that flood the screen on his office wall like a mad Socialist hijacker's dream.
The revolutionary demands are repeatedly endlessly the better to be ridiculed by the corporate news moderators and their establishment guests: guaranteed basic income, free health care, total debt jubilee, empty the prisons, gut the police and military, a month of federal paid vacation, guaranteed housing, a new national bank credited with $10 trillion to fund it all, and more.
Meanwhile the President has reappeared as if only to prove how completely she has been disappeared from the face of Earth. Not to return until the wildly plausible but realistically impossible socialist demands are met.
Director Kingsley secludes himself in his office in an attempt to break the fracturing effect of the news, this unfathomable mess. Largely his responsibility. Yet he cannot pull away from the screen. He's so far beyond shocked that he feels completely, amazingly lucid – in a newly crazy world. He stands at the entrance to the bizarre spectacle as if transcendently bewildered, stunningly enlightened, terribly helpless, and somehow all but okay with this new mode of being, except for the demands of his job which are merciless in reminding him that he is at fault. He feels alive, awake, trapped, and stoned. President Silver lives.
Who could have believed it a day ago? Any of it. The bizarre outrage of the demands. And that Kingsley has not after all committed the greatest professional failure that it is possible for him to commit – though he came so close he went far down over the brink only to be lifted back up to the precipice by unknown villains even more wily and aggressive than the murderous white supremacist bombers of Texas.
Kingsley cuts to the core: there's new life. Hers, hers, and his. How to bring them home? How to restore a once orderly world that will never be so orderly again? How to keep his job.
Order, he reminds himself, social order, only appears so after the fact. Until everything is over and done, everything is in fucking flux.
He's about fluxed out right now.
Kingsley turns his back to the news and returns to his desk. He sits in his office chair and leans away from the damned screen. He intertwines and interlocks the fingers of both hands on his lap.
If his former wife had not walked out on him months ago, he knows she would have said this morning, “Get your ass into the office and figure it out.” He's glad, now, she did walk. And he's no longer surprised to feel that he cares not into whose arms she stepped. He dares to feel almost bad for the guy he has heard rumors of but does not know. His former wife, she'll be fine, not that it matters now. And, who knows, maybe the new couple deserves each other for the bad in themselves, yet maybe they can find ways to interact to heal whatever ails them, so as not to be yet one more mentally and socially inbred pair of miserable wretches dying through life. Which is exactly the way Kingsley felt not so long ago. Mistakes were made. He can have a healthy relationship, one day, he's certain of it though he knows not how. What he does know is that first you see the poison in the air, then in your own mind, then in your very gut. Then you take it out. Or, it gets levered away from you by someone quicker to the jump. You might also live with and die of it seemingly forever. Eternal death in life – a frightening thing to imagine. Worse to live.
How to grow and go? Always, how. How to get that thing? How to figure it out?
How to find and free the President?
Seriously, who kidnaps and ransoms the President of the United States of America?
A suicide cult.
Clearly.
It seems obvious all at once – Kingsley leans forward – Silver will never be released.
What purpose would it serve?
The kidnappers could never flee so far underground that they would not be found.
Not on this planet. Not in this universe. Not anymore. Big Brother and corporate syndicates, the venal megalopolis of money, the big eye in the sky, it's everywhere. Earth is increasingly a minuscule pre and post apocalyptic place, everything and everyone always in reach of almighty wealth and power. Forget scent dogs, forget electronics, forget drones, biotechnology will one day soon tentacle the world.
And the CIA is all over it. The agency claims to have contracted with scientists who genetically engineer insects to climb into a person's nose and run out when they lie. Kingsley shudders. Probably it's bullshit like so many of the CIA's other wondrous technologies, plots, and schemes, but Kingsley knows that the watershed moment of biological science and genetic engineering is beginning to make the high-fly, high-spy electronics revolution look like a frivolous thrill. If bugs can fight crime, will it be long before they are planted into people's brains? Naturally the people will be forced to pay for the treatment themselves.
Powerful forces rule the world, own it, force it, shape its content and conditions at will. No refuge for anyone anywhere – certainly not for a screw-up Secret Service Director – everything and everyone subject to elimination and extermination, now. Everything and everyone can be found and destroyed by those who own the world. Revolutionary socialist state kidnappers especially.
So the hostage takers will never release President Silver, until they are found and destroyed. They intend to keep Silver until the moment of their final act of suicide by cop. By all the cops, in this case, in whatever novel form that twisted type of suicide might reach its final point. Whatever monstrous shape it might take, the end will come whenever Kinglsey and company can make it come.
The President? Well, the President might survive. Might not.
More death, Kingsley is certain, is the only way, the best hope for bringing President Silver back from the grave.
And for keeping his job.
Kingsley feels bad for himself in the moment. Mainly because here he sits in the office trying to figure things out exactly like his spurious – but oh so elegant – wife would have commanded. Elegance can be a crude thing. Elegant of foot and leg. Of upper limbs. Transfixing lines and curves of sinew, flesh, skeleton. Fat and bone and muscle made sublime. Kingsley is a sucker for the human form of a certain kind. Or he was. Or continues to be. He should have learned. Live and learn. Never fall for such dizzying elegant crudity again. The graceful and the lean get him, though, they got him. The brain is susceptible and needs to be forced out of itself. Play the opposite game. The opposite end of the physical and personality spectrum would be someone short, solid, and openly, overtly rude, like Sabia Perez. How horrible would that be? In what sort of household would someone want to live with someone like her? Is it not possible that there could be a happy balance? A healthy median of positive vibes and soothing angles. Is there a mere sane midpoint to anything?
Certain men – of Kingsley's inclinations – will consume women, certain men will relish them. Other men will support them. Some will live and let live. As for Kingsley, he wants to be all men.
“I'm totally fucked,” says Kingsley to the TV news.
His wife – she wanted another type of man entirely. He saw the hungry look in her eyes all the while he was blinded by her elegance of limb.
He wishes he had an elegant plan right now. Or even a rude and crude one. A few competent words to deliver to his new boss would be nice. Alecta O’Roura-Chavez. A single good idea would be as if a miracle.
Kingsley pushes aside the agency reports already on his desk. They are meaningless in pretending to convey a definitive dose of knowledge, actually a lack of knowledge. Nothing but nothing there. No one knows a thing.
Nor do the news anchors on TV, but at least no one expects them to know anything, not at first. And yet they talk. Mostly reporting about what they don't know and maybe won't know and can't know. And then further about what everyone else doesn't know and can't know.
Kingley wishes his job was that easy, where you make up shit, opine ad infinitum, and pass it off as possibly plausible food for thought, then leave the table fully set with no one having eaten anything remotely nutritious.
And what they do know, or fail to know, or pretend to know, the TV yammering yodels, they spin six ways to next Wednesday, and of course always along the crook of the ideology of their bosses, the money-milking, censorious voice in their ear. Yes, the very, very expensive news, brought to the world dripping stale each day by the top corporate sponsors, advertisers, and campaign spenders, by the very kind of rational, cultivated, sheer banality of weevils that plunges IQs, metastasizes brains, fixes ideas, and turns a handsome profit, thank you very much.
“Jesus,” Kingsley says to himself. “Make it dark will you.”
“It is what it is,” Kingsley adds to no ears other than his own. A big part of his job is to actually know the world he lives in, and not to merely play along with the world he's told that he lives in.
Which is of no help to him today. That he can see.
Kingsley glances away from the TV screen in a kind of levitating meditative fog.
His administrative Aide Li Phuong is at the door, apparently having no choice but to usher in FBI Director Maximilian Castelan.
“Director Kingsley,” she says hurriedly. “Director Castelan.”
“Thank you, Li.” Kingsley stands and moves to the side of his desk, transitioning smoothly, if awkwardly in a way that can put everyone's guard down. It's how he operates, as he sees fit. It's how when you excel at everything you conventionally need to excel at, you can get an extra little interpersonal edge to get the job, keep the job, work it. Kingsley nods to Phuong as she withdraws, and to Castelan as he strides in. “Maximilian.”
Together they watch a live shot of the Acting President in transit to the White House, moving quickly under Marine One chopper blades, security on all sides.
News Moderator: “Ever since the alleged coup, terror strike, and assassination attempt against President Silver, Acting President O’Roura-Chavez stays in a different secure location each night. She is expected to make a full statement soon about the revelations and ransom demands. FBI Director Castelan and Secret Service Director Kingsley are meeting as we speak.”
Kingsley mutes the TV.
“Under those chopper blades, she looks scared. On the run,” says Castelan.
“You would be too.”
“No. I make people run.”
“Alecta knows she was the main target. Every bit as much as President Silver. More so,” says Kingsley. “Free Sovereign Texas said as much.”
“Those boys are fish food now.”
“Only some of them.”
At first, the Directors have the air of two officials intent on consoling one another for their mutually uncomfortable professional situations, even as they exchange veiled criticisms and mild barbs. Neither man sits down nor seems to consider doing so. Castelan roams Kingsley’s office studying everything, including him.
“I don’t envy your ass, Kingsley. This is worse for you than if the President had been killed outright.”
“Only you would say that, Max.”
“Not only did you send Silver into a late night Iowa blizzard – did you never see reruns of Little House on the fucking Prairie? – your men apparently put Silver in a goddamn snowplow.”
“She’s alive, isn’t she?”
“Jesus fucking Christ! She’s worse than dead! Silver’s a goddamn hostage. We can’t have hostages. Not of that stature. It gives people leverage.”
“My agents saved their lives – Silver and Lin. And sacrificed their own.”
“We found hair, you know. Silver and Lin’s DNA all over the snowplow cab. It leads you to wonder: who the fuck was doing their job?”
“You have your assessment, Director Castelan. We have ours.”
“You first. I insist.”
“Don’t boss me, Goldilocks.”
“What?”
“Something I heard.” Kingsley notes with a twinge of bitter irony that he summoned the ghost of the ever prickly Sabia Perez to deal with the dead-eyed Director of the FBI. “Look, Max, there was no contact. Communication was entirely blocked by the storm.”
“It’s called a fucking blizzard.”
“Your FBI let Texas Secessionists blow up Ground Force One.”
“That’s on the Navy – not me. We know where our white supremacist militia boys are, Director Kingsley, I assure you.”
“I bet you do.”
“This is your ass on the line, not mine.”
“Not how it looks to me. Alecta says it's 9-11 all over again. That's how it looks to her. And everyone is ducking blame. Blameless!”
“Look in the mirror, Pal,” says Castelan. “Our scent dogs determined several Secret Service agents were in the Perez farmhouse at some point sweeping every corner of it.”
“Sabia told us that. It’s standard practice to create a safe location during schedule disruption.”
“Schedule blow-up.”
“Your FBI forensics gave us next to nothing. No DNA of the President outside of the plow cab. Sabia gave us everything.”
“Sabia Perez is a fucking nobody. I know Sabia Perez and every other petty do-gooder all across this fucked-up country. People like her don't call us the national political police for nothing, you know. But what in Hell are Silver and Lin doing in a snowplow in an Iowa blizzard? Under your watch.”
“They were thrown in. By attackers.”
“There’s no fucking evidence of that.”
“They were bound.”
“You don’t fucking know.”
“They were transported against their will.”
“Your great Sabia says she saw nothing at all. Never saw the President. Not in a plow cab or anywhere else.”
“Nor could she if Silver was taken north to Des Moines, instead of south past Sabia’s farmhouse to nowhere.”
“The road was plowed from the south, not the north. They were stuck going north.”
“Snowmobile, who knows. Or maybe they did go south and Sabia didn't see. There was a fucking blizzard.”
“Maybe they skied away. Kingsley, do you ski?”
“Fuck you, Castelan.” Kingsley moves in front of his desk and points his finger at the chest of the FBI Director. Kingsley is the younger man, by decades. He's not going to be bullied in his own office. That said, in one-on-one combat with the FBI Director, though it should never come to that, he doesn't necessarily like his odds. His own little aggressive move here is purely defensive. In fact, Castelan appears pugnacious enough in the moment that Kingsley finds himself examining the exact best point on Castelan's nose, eye, and especially jaw where he would need to strike a debilitating blow, should Castelan come at him in the flesh and the blood. “Look,” says Kingsley. “Silver and Lin were dropped somewhere. Then the snowplow was returned to the bus before the missile strike. To fuck with the evidence.”
“You don’t know any of that. What’s more likely is that Silver and Lin got into the snowplow, willingly, to go to the farmhouse that had been swept.”
“Now who’s guessing.”
“Your agency was infiltrated.”
“Show me the receipts, Castelan.”
“Well it wasn’t Darius Vance. His remains have been IDed. Barely.”
“Plow driver maybe, not Secret Service.”
“We hit the backgrounds of all three drivers. Anything’s possible, but it wasn’t them. Everyone looks clean. Plow drivers. Bus driver. Staff. Agents. The girl.”
“Sabia.”
“And her dead grandfather, Roca Perez. It’s as if your men had orders to disappear the President, Director Kingsley.”
“Easy, Castelan.”
“People think there’s an infiltrator. Maybe You.”
“Such bullshit.”
“It’s already online. Billy the Moto Kid suggested as much. He was far from the first. This isn’t my idea.”
“The web is a cesspool,” says Kingsley. He paces. “It was climate collapse. A freak blizzard.”
“You believe in that shit? All that climate BS.”
“Don’t be a fucking tool, Castelan. I can’t stand the stench of it.”
President Silver, Ellen Lin, and Roca Perez stand directly in front of the cable TV in the bunker. Silver in the middle. They can't stop watching the chaos broadcast to the entire electronic world.
News moderators hammer the several dozen security agencies for once, for having missed everything – the assassination attempt, the hostage taking: “The FBI, Secret Service, NSA, CIA, et cetera and so on. What does the public pay them for?”
Roca nods at the screen. “Sabia would say, 'Too busy spying on the American people. And the world.'”
The moderators speculate about an inside job, and a coup. “How far down the rabbit hole are we? By the looks of things: deep, deep underground.”
“Tell me,” says President Silver. “Right here I am.”
“We'll get out soon,” says Lin.
“Do you actually believe that?” says Silver.
“That's not the point, Kristen. And you know it.”
“I'm no rabbit,” says Roca. “More of a tree squirrel. Safe with the nuts.” He walks away and slaps a painted coal and stone pillar in appreciation, the pillar cool and sturdy enough to easily bear the weight of the Earth. He settles on a bench with his book, Tree Crops, and makes like a literate squirrel, a primeval human, a philosopher of the earth beneath his feet, above his head, and on all sides.
Lin lowers the TV news volume with a remote. “How much do you trust Castelan and the FBI?” she asks the President.
“I should have fired him.”
“And Kingsley?”
“I never thought he was the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“He’s not the dullest though.”
“Some ways,” says Silver.
“Kingsley will find us. It was his people he lost. And ours.”
“And me especially,” says Silver. “You lose the President, you kinda lose your job. Should.”
“But we need him. We need him now.”
Director Kingsley turns away from Castelan. He looks out the window of his office and sees not the city but the sky.
“The storm stopped the bus,” says Kingsley. “Then someone told a lie, drove away with the President. Then bombs. Navy fucking missiles. White-Supremacists-R-Us. Maybe if the Navy hadn’t sunk the submarine we might have a goddamn lead already.”
“I visit the Navy Chief next.”
“Anyone else on your hit list?”
“Sabia Perez.”
“Don't be stupid. Your people grilled that girl to within an inch of her life.”
“Not quite.”
“And then she took it out on me. She’s a tortured soul, Castelan. Go easy on her. In fact, pull your guards. It's harassment at this point.”
“President Silver was in your care, Director Kingsley. Now O’Roura-Chavez is. And you have no idea what happened.”
“Our care. I gave you my view. Tell me the FBI theory.”
Castelan smiles. Kingsley finds it incredibly grimy. “Silver could’ve been stashed in a million basements, closets, sheds, barns, or church steeples in Iowa alone.”
“Church steeples, Castelan? Jesus Christ. Maybe God Himself kidnapped the President.”
“Our theory is developing.”
Director Kingsley unmutes the news.
News Moderator: “See now this drone video recorded by Youtuber Billy the Moto Kid the morning after the attack. Near the impact point we see the Perez farmhouse and orchards. Billy was shot at by rescue workers but survived and will be joining us live after this break.”
“That Billy's our boy,” says Castelan. “A survivor. Straight shooter.”
“Thanks for coming by, Maximilian. I told you everything and you offered nothing new in return. I feel thoroughly surveilled. ”
“My pleasure, Director. Anytime.”
“Every time.”
“We’re the dying breed, Director.”
“Climate collapse?”
“O’Roura-Chavez. She’s coming for us. Rumor has it I’ll be fired, and you’re next. She thinks she’s in control now. Be prepared. She's the real threat. Not the sky falling. She is the sky falling. On us. You and me, Kid.”
“Now who's scared?” says Kingsley.
“Not me.”
“Okay, Director.”
Kingsley escorts Castelan out of his office. He then watches the interview of Billy the Moto Kid while his drone video simultaneously plays on TV. The video shows Sabia standing on her farmhouse porch as Kingsley walks toward her days earlier.
Kingsley talks to the TV. “Sabia, do you know more than you say? Doesn't everyone? Maybe you especially.”
On TV, as Billy’s video plays, Sabia shakes her head and appears to gesture at rescue workers with guns. Then she turns and goes into the farmhouse. After a moment, Kingsley follows.
“I’ll get it all out of you, Sabia. I’ll find the President. I’ll keep my job. And you’re going to help me, Sabia Perez.”
“DISASTER BY THE FARMHOUSE” seems permanently implanted upon the screens of cable TV.
Excitement. Sabia stands on a snowplowed pile of snow in her high school parking lot. Bright sunlight, blue sky.
Sabia hollers the now publicized ransom demands of the American Liberation Alliance to her classmates who have blown-out of school, led by Sabia and her social justice group.
Many students build snowmen and snow forts in the brilliant weather. Others cheer, “Meet the demands!” every time Sabia punches her left-handed power fist into the air.
The first demand of the American Liberation Alliance is lighthearted yet serious and meant to be at least one that most everyone can easily get behind. Sabia shouts:
“ONE: Free the daylight! Immediate end to Daylight Savings Time nationwide. Let there be light!” Sabia punches sky with her left hand.
Chorus of students: “Meet the demands!”
“TWO: Basic Survival! Universal Basic Income for all adults. $2,000 per month. People have a right to live. Triple the minimum wage. Double the income level at which poverty is defined, extending massive amounts of food, housing, financial benefits to low income families. Up with people!”
“Meet the demands!”
“THREE: Health Care! Free Medicare For All, including full dental, vision, hearing. Free childcare! 1 year maternity and paternity leave! All paperless immigrants legalized to cover them on all demands! Legalize the people!”
“Meet the demands!”
“FOUR: Debt Relief! Total education and medical debt elimination. Free college. You fuckers! $25,000 credit for any additional debt, or $25,000 credit for anyone with no debt. People are not bank slaves!”
Billy the Moto Kid stands nearby video-recording Sabia.
“Sabia, do me an interview! My Youtube channel demands it!”
“Shut up, Billy! I’m reading the fucking demands.”
“You can’t say that on Youtube!”
“Fuck you!”
Billy The Moto Kid: “I knew you would side with the terrorists!”
“They’re not terrorists, Billy. Maybe you are! They only want a better world. What do you want? More scribecash!” Sabia pumps her power fist.
“Meet the demands! Meet the demands!”
In the crowd, Sabia sees Avery Yonkin, Billy's younger brother. Avery smiles, pumps his left fist at her.
Sabia smiles back. Avery is two grades behind Sabia and Billy, standing with his friends. Avery doesn’t chant but pumps his fist. Unlike Billy, Avery has worked with Sabia and Roca during summers on their farm. Avery never takes his eyes off Sabia.
Snowballs fly. Snowmen and snow forts are built. An igloo. An occasional snowball soars high over Sabia’s head.
“FIVE: Prison Cuts! Cut the population behind bars by 60 percent in 2 years. All savings to re-integration and other social services. Justice for all!”
“Meet the demands!”
“SIX: Gun Cuts! Reduce police and military spending 30 percent each, now. 60 percent in 2 years. All savings to social services, including tens of millions of quality new low-income housing units to end homelessness and price gouging! Peace not prison! Housing not guns! Protect the people!”
“Meet the demands!”
“Why do you love criminals, Sabia?!” says Billy.
“Meet the demands!”
“That’s what Jesus Christ did, Billy, you thug! Loved criminals!”
“Meet the demands!”
“Why do you hate the police, Sabia?!”
“Meet the demands!”
“The police started as slave patrols, Billy! And they keep patrolling! Why do you love the police state, Billy?!”
“Meet the demands!”
Why do you hate guns and the military, Sabia?!”
“Meet the demands!”
“The US killing machine blew up Ground Force One and tried to overthrow democracy! Billy, you thug!”
“Meet the demands!”
“Billy, why do you repeat all the lies of White Empire?! Including the lie that it doesn’t exist!”
“Meet the demands!”
“SEVEN: Vacation Time! Mandated 30 hour work-week. 5 weeks federal-paid vacation. 3 day paid voting holiday. Lower the voting age to 16! Or lower! Free the people!”
“Meet the demands!”
“EIGHT: Final demand. Credit 10 trillion dollars into a new national bank to pay for everything. No more filching taxes on the little guy! Tax the rich to stop economic conquest of the little guy. Tax the rich to stop the destruction of the planet and all its creatures!”
“Meet the demands! Meet the demands! Meet the demands!”
Billy climbs onto the snow mound to interview Sabia.
“Sabia, are these terrorist kidnappers heroes to you?”
Sabia speaks directly to Billy's phone camera. “The American Liberation Alliance, what they are demanding is heroic: human rights that President O’Roura-Chavez can deliver. Now!”
“Ransom demands are human rights?”
“It’s revolutionary, Billy. Deal with it.”
Sabia pumps her fist for each right and chants:
“Health care is a human right! Education is a human right! Basic income is a human right! A livable planet is a human right! Am I right?!”
“You’re right! You’re right!”
“What about daylight savings time?” says Billy.
“Fuck daylight savings time!”
“Fuck daylight savings time! Meet the demands!”
“What about all the people who died in the missile attack? Including your grandfather.”
Sabia looks directly at Billy's camera. “The crazies who launched the bombs are not the people holding the President now. Both groups have said they have nothing to do with each other. The bombing group is Evil. The other group demands a better world. Meet the demands!”
“I knew your grandfather a little. My brother worked for him summers.”
“My abuelo is alive to me. I miss him and feel him beside me.”
“Where do you think the kidnappers took President Silver?”
Sabia shades her eyes, appears to scan the snowy horizon.
“Probably someplace warm.”
In the bunker, President Silver stands in front of the TV and watches news of the crisis as analysts speculate about where the hostages might be. Roca mixes lemon powder into a glass of water in the kitchen. Lin walks on the treadmill. Silver snaps off the TV with a remote.
“How in the fuck does she get away with it?”
“My nieta is smarter than you. Truth. Gutsier too. An all-around better person, for real.”
“Give it a rest, Roca,” says Lin.
“Truth hurts. I know. I got truth bruises all over me.”
“Sabia is so dead for this.” Silver flings the remote against the couch.
Sabia pumps her fist on the snow mound in front of the school. “Meet the demands!”
“Meet the demands! Meet the demands!”
“Do you think the kidnappers will ever free the President?” asks Billy the Moto Kid. He extends his phone camera toward Sabia.
“If they get what they demand.”
“Would President Silver want AOC to give away all the free stuff?”
“The US can’t throw bombs to get what it wants this time, Billy. Give people what they need, for a change. There’s nothing else to do. Nothing else you should do.”
“Special Forces could go out. Seals, Rangers. Track ‘em down.”
“And kill President Silver in the crossfire. That's what guns do.”
“What if the kidnappers never give up the President?”
“Then the President, and Congress, and the Courts failed to meet the demands. The demands of the People. The just and popular demands.”
“But they’re terrorists.”
“Congress and the Courts – or the kidnappers?”
“You make people hate you, Sabia.”
“Who hates me? Evil people? If you deny people badly needed health care and other basic qualities of life so that they needlessly suffer and die, aren’t you a terrorist?”
“No.”
“Wrong. School is in session, Billy. Try to keep up. The American Liberation Alliance says-”
“They’ll make the country go broke.”
“Back to second grade with you, Billy. The country is not like you and me. By Constitutional law, Congress can credit as many dollars as it wants to, out of thin air, to meet vital needs. Don’t be stupid, young man. The big private banks do it all the time. Doesn’t cause inflation more than anything else. There’s no reason Congress can’t buy President Silver her freedom while meeting the needs of the people. It’s MORONIC – and hopelessly cruel and vicious – to fail to do so. Total idiocy. Sheer brutality.”
“Are you calling everyone like me a moron? A terrible idiot?”
“Whether you know it or not, you’re apologizing for vicious cruelty.”
“So I’m vicious and cruel.”
“You try to justify the violence and the ghouls, the filching police state, the guns, the prisons, and all the needless damage and destruction done. You drink the Kool Aid. You love that stuff. Now you’re dumber than the day you were born. Literally. You got it backward, Billy. Or maybe you don’t care. You have one idea, and it’s wrong. Maybe you’re proud of White Empire. The more brown and black people it kills and controls, the richer it gets. The more poor whites it stomps on, the more your chest swells.”
“I haven’t killed anybody.”
“That’s good. You shouldn’t kill people, Billy. But White Empire is ending the world. Earth is dying. 'Climate change' is propaganda. 'Climate collapse' is reality. Bad policies kill. Bad policies that enable and allow climate collapse will kill everybody. All creatures large and small. The dying has begun, long since. All of life that we so love – it's all in the crosshairs.”
“It’s not me killing the planet and people.”
“White Empire targets the world with bullets and dollars. Look out if you’re brown or black. Or just shit poor. Bombs, bullets, banks, same effect. Class is in session, Billy!”
“You’re not teaching me anything.”
“You, no. The camera, we’ll see.”
Billy looks at his camera.
“Big corporate media applauds White Empire 24/7 while hammering President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez for wanting to meet the demands that meet the needs of the people of all colors and backgrounds. Go figure.”
“Guns are more fun anyway. That’s how the President will be rescued.”
Sabia slaps the camera out of Billy’s hands.
The camera falls into snow below the mound. Billy scrambles to recover it.
Then he films upward at Sabia from his knees in snow.
“Was that fun, Billy?”
Sabia points her hand in shape of a gun, keeps pointing as Billy rises from snow.
“You’re crazy, Sabia Perez! You talk like a terrorist!”
Sabia throws her hands into the air.
“Don’t shoot!”
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Sabia pumps a power fist. “Meet the demands!”
“Meet the demands!”
An icy hard snowball hits Sabia in the gut.
A big snowball pops Billy in the middle of his back and a huge snowball fight breaks out.
A few female teachers try to break it up, to little effect. The male teachers don't get involved.
Sabia shelters behind the pile of snow with Gabe and Roane, friends and allies.
“Oh, joy,” says Roane. “Here we go again, taking it from all sides.”
The three compañeros are marked and bound by their collective actions for change, and though they cannot know it yet, they are each pregnant with ever more grave actions to come.
Snowballs fly overhead, angry icy streaks, and more rational slow lobs that try to defeat the frozen barrier they hide behind.
With her back to the snow mound, Sabia stares up at the blazing blue sky full of drifting white clouds. It looks so peaceful, up high. And it feels so angry, down low.
Well, down low is where they live.
“Here we are declaring World Revolution,” says Sabia, “and the boys want to throw snowballs.”
“At least we blew out of class,” says Gabe.
“Boys will be boys,” says Roane.
“Not me,” says Gabe. “It's all fun and games until you get hit in the eye with a chunk of ice. But because life is wildly unfair, I'll probably fall on a patch of silent death and break my head. My glorious destiny.”
“Look on the bright side,” says Sabia. “There are worse fates.”
“I've imagined those too.”
“I once saw a milk snake in a robin's nest in a goumi bush devour a fluorescent blue robin's egg,” says Sabia. “I saw the yolk dripping from its fangs. Then I saw the robin parents come back later in the day, inspect the scene, and fly off.”
“That's gross,” says Gabe.
“Gets grosser,” says Sabia. “I watched a hawk land on a stone wall against a bank where gray squirrels and red squirrels and chipmunks run to get to the seeds in the cones of the spruce tree nearby. The hawk patiently waited until a vole poked out from a tunnel behind the stones. Voles can hardly see. And hawks have the eye. Especially when they're standing right on top of you. The hawk pounced, and pecked, and flew off with the vole.”
“Sabia, we're under attack here,” says Roane. “If they charge us, we're done.”
Sabia examines the blue sky.
“That's disgusting,” says Gabe.
“Another time in the orchard where so much life grows, I saw the aftermath of a gorgeous pileated woodpecker mangled at the base of a gooseberry bush. It's strong and lithe body – all strewn to death. I assume it attacked the new resident milk snake, which surprised it in being far too big to wrangle. I removed the body to the edge of the woods. That evening, from another edge of the woods, high in a dead ash tree, its mate called out. Called, and called. And the whole world broke, and my heart with it, again and again. Like it does every day. Maybe the mate found the body, I like to think so. Then at least it could mourn in the knowledge. It never called out again. I never heard or saw it again.”
“Okay, you're right, Sabia,” says Gabe. “Getting killed by a milk snake would be worse than slipping on ice.”
“You'll slip on ice first. You won't be killed by a milk snake. They're docile and nice. Like me. Just don't attack. I'm kind of like a milk snake, right. Docile and nice. Just don't attack me.”
“Okay, we're being attacked,” says Roane.
Sabia nods at the puffy bright clouds. “When I find a garter snake sunning itself in a spot where I need to work, it slithers away so fast that it ought to be named skitter snake. Ever friendly, to humans. When I find the bigger milk snake curled in a place I need to work, it plays dumb and takes forever to move, so I gently scoop it with a shovel and walk it away, usually to the base of the barn where it has plenty to do.”
“You mean where it can kill voles and mice and things,” says Gabe.
“Or sun itself.”
“Sabia.” Roane keeps lookout over the edge of the snow mound. “Time to stop sunning yourself like a milk snake. We need to fight back. They're going to charge.”
“There's so much pain and suffering we can't control,” says Sabia. “It's inherent in life. That's why it's so urgent to alleviate all the death and distress we possibly can. And not damn well create it ourselves. Our work here today is done. We read the demands. We chose sides and made clear the sides. We're partisans and everyone knows, and they can be too. The real fight comes another day. We'll need more people then. We need more people now. Maybe even Billy.”
“Never Billy,” says Gabe.
“Not happening,” says Roane.
“Hard to believe,” says Sabia. “What hardens a person's brain, and freezes their heart.” She studies the slow drift of the clouds. “Some things are hard to believe.”
“We've got a good position, we need to take advantage,” says Roane. “The boys are sitting ducks until they aren't. Billy too.” Roane dodges several snowballs, then returns fire.
“Roane,” says Sabia. “It's a losing game. The boys play at things where they have the advantage.”
Roane fires again. “So do I.” She swats an incoming snowball out of the air. “Maybe not snowballs. But snowballs are fun.”
“Until you take ice in the eye,” says Gabe.
Sabia climbs up beside Roane. Everyone appears to be throwing at anyone they can, close by, except for Billy and his group of boys steadily firing at the position of Sabia, Roane, and Gabe. Sabia scoops snow, packs it, then aims at Billy who has taken minimal shelter behind a No Parking sign. She hits the sign.
Billy returns fire. Misses.
“Fuck Billy,” says Sabia. She begins to throw as fast as she can.
“That's my Sabia,” says Roane.
“I don't think this is a very good bonding and solidarity action,” says Gabe.
“We didn't pick this fight,” says Sabia. “Anyway, sometimes we suck at tactics and strategy. Sometimes we nail it. Trial and error. Live and learn.”
“Not everything is part of the revolution, Gabe,” says Roane.
“Oh this is. One thing I know, Billy will never be on our side. His brain is bent so far to the right. He got lobotomized early.”
“The Billies die off, eventually. It may be the only way,” says Sabia. “The brainwashing cuts so deep, even though they think it doesn't. Look at them. They think they're normal. Get up here, Gabe.”
“Normally wrong,” says Roane.
“I'm good here,” says Gabe. “In fact, you should join me.”
Distracted, Sabia nearly gets hit. She sees Billy's younger brother Avery running toward her. Avery reaches the base of the snow pile, grabs some snow, then turns and throws a snowball at Billy. Climbing up the pile to Sabia, Avery gets hit three times in the back.
“Avery!” She pulls him behind the mound and slides down beside him. “Who threw the first snowball that hit me in the gut. Tell me.”
“Who do you think? One of Billy's friends. Keegan Miller.”
“I hate him,” says Gabe.
“Everyone hates the bully,” says Sabia.
“Not everyone,” says Gabe. “People pick and choose sides. Boys and girls too. Bullies have friends.”
“Friends and enemies,” say Avery. “Let's get him.”
“It's all fun and games except it isn't,” says Gabe. “You're too small to be a macho man, Avery. Relax and stay low. For life.”
“No one should do that,” says Sabia. “You don't, Gabe.”
“Some people should.”
“I got Keegan twice,” says Roane, still throwing and dodging, fully absorbed in the give and take.
“Gabe's right about one thing,” says Sabia. “Fights are exactly what they want. Play fights, real fights. Their own personal waste of time.”
“It's control,” says Avery. “Billy thinks he's the boss of me.”
“His camera,” says Sabia. “We can use that against him. Sometimes.”
“When you three members of the intelligensia are done with your philosophy session,” says Roane, “get up here and help me fight off this pack of psycho White Walkers. The fight is up top today, not down low.”
“Anything for you, Roane,” says Sabia without rising. Then she packs a snowball. So does Avery.
Gabe shakes his head. “I'm all about sitting this one out. No good at it, don't need it.”
“We won the battle of ideas and principles and publicity,” says Sabia. “That's what matters. A little extra exercise and fresh air won't hurt.”
“Oh, it will,” says Gabe.
Sabia scrambles all the way up to the very top of the wall of snow at its highest most exposed point. Snowballs streak past her.
“Hey Billy! Freeze your brain with this!” Sabia launches her snowball and misses. She kneels, turns her back to Billy and packs more snow. The boys pelt her repeatedly.
“Sabia!” says Roane. “Get down! Not like that!”
“I'm tired of hiding,” says Sabia. “Tell me when I can turn.”
Roane waits until Billy and crew reload. “Okay. It's clear.”
Sabia stands and squares up with a handful of snowballs. She throws them one by one, scoring a couple hits. Then she spreads her arms wide facing her enemies as they launch a barrage. She twists and turns and weaves away from some of the incoming, while knocking down other missiles with her hands. She allows hits to her legs and sides. One near miss catches her hair.
“Sabia! You're crazy!” Roane jumps up beside her, followed by Avery. They pack snowballs and throw madly.
Gabe glances up from the protected base of the pile. “And for the final demand,” he says aloud, “the American Liberation Alliance orders Congress to outlaw all the chaos from life.”
Sabia hears and keeps fighting. “Don't be cynical, Gabe.” She kicks a snow shower onto his head. “Tomorrow is a new day. We'll fight for it all again tomorrow.”
Gabe packs a snowball and throws it up at her. Hits her in the butt.
Sabia laughs. “Good shot,” she says.
“Today we throw snow,” says Roane.
“Tomorrow we overthrow the world!” says Sabia.
“Just get Billy,” says Avery. “That's all I care about.”
“Get Billy for Avery!” Sabia aims and fires, hits the edge of the sign, splattering the boys with icy shrapnel. The three warriors fight as if their lives depended on it, while Gabe shelters below. They arm, aim, and fire, over and over, shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder, Sabia, Avery, Roane, not knowing how soon the fight of their lives will come for them each in the form of bullets and steel.
