Most Revolutionary - Chapter Nineteen
Sabia Enraged — Alecta Engaged
Previously: Sabia takes a fourth hostage. Roca and Jenna burn fugitive FBI Director Castelan’s car to the bottom of Rathbun Lake. Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez reinstates Secret Service Director William Kingsley. Kingsley goes to Iowa.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
During a killer Iowa blizzard, fearless DAPL militant and radical plant nursery grower Sabia Perez first saves then kidnaps the stranded President of the USA to ransom a better world.
Sabia Perez parks the pickup truck in the farmhouse drive near the porch.
In the passenger seat, Tucker Gere recovers from the stun gun blast. He is bound legs, arms, and mouth.
Sabia waves the stun gun at his face. “You want another shock?”
Tucker shakes his head.
“That's right.” She puts the stun gun in her coat pocket.
Snow flies. The wind hits. It’s damn cold.
At the passenger-side door, Sabia peels the tape off his mouth, and also from around his ankles, but not from his knees, or wrists behind his back.
“How’s your neck,” she says.
“Been better.”
“Story of my life.”
“What’s going on, Sabia? Are you working with Castelan? Or against him? He tried to kill me and now you kidnap me? Where’s Castelan? I have nothing to do with that guy. He attacked me.”
“Shut up, Tucker. People live or die depending on what I do here. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“You’re part of the revolution, now, whether you like it or not. Get out.”
Tucker awkwardly hops into the new snow on the drive.
Sabia grabs the .22 pump rifle from behind the truck seat. She uses it to push Tucker toward the farmhouse. Taped at the knees, hands bound behind his back, Tucker is forced to duck-walk.
“What revolution are you talking about?” says Tucker. “I was attacked, I tell you. I don’t want to be here. I would say nothing to no one about anything.”
“Can't take that chance, Tucker. Sorry. You’re stuck in Iowa with me.”
Near the porch, Tucker plants himself in front of Sabia and refuses to move.
“The fuck do you mean? What’s going on, Sabia?”
Sabia pops Tucker in the chest with the length of the rifle, but he only sways slightly.
Sabia backs up, gets a running start, and hits him like a little bull, driving her shoulder into Tucker's guts, pushing him to the porch where he falls over the step.
He sits on the porch floor, stares up at Sabia. “You’re crazy!”
“Goddamn it! I have all the power. Do what I say!” Sabia waves the rifle above her head and stands over Tucker.
Then she turns and walks into the dark. Snow flies. Wind hits. It’s cold. There’s no give to the storm nor to Sabia. She walks back to the porch. Tucker slides his hands under his arms. His gloves are forgotten in the truck.
Sabia looks down at Tucker. “Sometimes it takes a crazy woman. The American Liberation Alliance holds President Silver for social ransom. Okay? I’m part of the Alliance. Castelan came to bust us, to be a hero. He came to find Silver. Except we busted him.”
“You've got President Silver? You’re working with Castelan now?”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’ve got them both.”
“How?”
“Does it matter? Get up.” Sabia takes out the stun gun.
“Okay, okay.”
Tucker struggles to stand. Sabia helps him to his feet.
“Nothing is as it seems, is it?” says Tucker. “I’m sorry about the loss of your grandfather, Sabia. Everyone knows he was killed in the bombing. Or was he?”
“You worry about your own sorry ass, Smart Guy.”
“I’m on your side, Sabia. I like what the ALA stands for.”
“Move it.” Sabia opens the front door. “Go.”
Sabia pushes Tucker into the kitchen, and locks the door behind them.
“Here you go, Castelan. Brought you a good friend,” says Sabia. “You two know each other, right?”
Tucker Gere is amazed to see fugitive FBI Director Maximilian Castelan bound and gagged and duct taped to the floorboards of the farmhouse kitchen.
Welcome to Iowa, Tucker says to himself. What level of Hell is this?
Castelan attempts to twist his body. His eyes widen when he sees Tucker — or his ghost — the young man whose neck he thought he snapped outside the Maryland bar, before stashing him in the trunk and stealing his car to flee cross country.
Fuck. Castelan’s eyes seem to vocalize.
Now Castelan knows: his attempted murder of Tucker Gere dooms him more than ever before.
Unless he can force the action to his will again. Finish the job on Gere. Recapture Sabia. And Kill Roca and Jenna — everyone believes those two to be dead or missing anyway.
Tough to do while pinned to the floor of an old farmhouse.
Sabia kicks Castelan in the ribs with the heel of her right boot. She kicks him twice. “Cross me, Tucker, and this will be you.”
Sabia puts the stun gun and rifle on the kitchen table.
“Recognize this monster without his disguise?”
“You’ve got him bound like a mummy,” says Tucker. “But if that's Castelan, whatever you need done with him, untie me, Sabia, and I’ll do it.”
“We may get to that,” says Sabia. “Keep you on a leash and turn you loose at the same time.”
Sabia strips her winter gear and Tucker’s too. A relief to be warm and safe from the storm. She worries about Roca and Jenna but knows they will need to find their own way home. If accosted by cops or helped by good Samaritans, Jenna and Roca have the sense not to lead anyone to the farmhouse, she hopes.
Sabia fills a water glass and holds it to Tucker’s lips. He drinks it all rapidly.
Castelan's eyes widen as he tries to communicate his own thirst. He pulls against the tape around his arms and wrists. He can barely flex.
“How does it feel, Castelan?” says Sabia.
“So he fled to Iowa to get you, because he knew about you and Silver?” says Tucker. “Do you really have Silver? Where?””
“Like a fucking fugitive.” Sabia returns the glass to the kitchen counter. “And total narcissist. He hunted me. He’s no fan of the second American Revolution. Shocker, right? Fucking FBI. Counterrevolutionaries top to bottom. National political police. Sit on the floor, Tucker.”
Tucker eyes Sabia. “I hear you, Sabia, but you know the FBI breaks up some corporate fraud, financial fraud too.”
“Sit down, Tucker. This is no debate club.” Sabia cocks her head at the guns on the table. Tucker sits.
“So you're the American Liberation Alliance, Sabia? You and the two others who got me out of the trunk.”
“Me, us, much of the country,” says Sabia. “Millions together, same side, all as one.”
“You don’t think that’s delusional?”
Sabia goes into the basement. She re-emerges with a coil of hemp rope. She waves it at Tucker. “Does this look delusional to you?”
“You don’t need that for me.”
“Okay, who’s delusional now?”
Sabia cuts a length of rope. She slides a kitchen chair against Tucker and ties his neck to the oak spindles that form the back of it.
She then pulls the kitchen table to the chair and ties the two together, binding Tucker in place.
“Inelegant but effective,” says Sabia. “Kind of like you-know-who.”
Kind of like welding, thinks Tucker. He doesn’t know how, but first chance he gets, he’s gone.
Sabia holds up a piece of duct tape, stretched taut. She squares it with Tucker's mouth.
“Are you ready?” she says.
“Don't—”
Sabia tapes his mouth shut.
“Sorry, Man. Sometimes the revolution is a bitch.”
Sabia takes a moment and looks at what she’s done.
No denying it. No celebrating. No marveling. She weighs her actions and considers the results.
Two men bound and silenced in her kitchen. Big, strong men. One bad man, very bad. One good man, possibly. One taped flat to the floor, the other tied to a table and chair. It’s true, she thinks. Sometimes revolution is a bitch.
And rough. And fucking lonely. No one should need to do so much for so long with as little as Sabia. How many hostages can one old farmhouse hold? Surely this is the end of it.
Sabia looks through dark window to storm. She hopes Jenna and Roca make it home soon. All literature is the search for a home. She read that once. Finding home. Making home. Coming home. Staying home. Building and bunkering into place seems to be all that Sabia does any more. As she must. Home is where the revolution is. Her home, at least. The Peoples’ revolution.
Sabia read too that all stories are action stories.
Or love stories.
All life.
Maybe so. Her home is where the action is. And the love.
Life is story. Her life feels it now. She tries to read the story of her life simultaneous as she lives it. There is too much to keep up with. Too many reflections to bear. Too many takeaways to carry. Too much reversal of fortune and fact and feeling to process. Too many new experiences — bad and good. Her life seems almost too novel to understand. Who is she really? A flaming revolutionary? Or simply a high school senior who aches to move forward, a late teen who got side-tracked on her way to graduation?
Sabia peers into the dark window. “This is what comes of blowing up pipelines at too early an age,” she says.
“Most Revolutionary” — her classmates voted her. What if they had voted her too, “Most Likely To Die Early In An Extremely Brutal Way.”
That would have shocked the crowd.
But not Sabia.
Does her story remain to be written? Or has her fate already been etched in the orderly lines of her orchard and underground home? Will she ever live life beyond country Iowa? Will she ever need to? Want to?
So many people say so many definitive things about life and each other.
Which are true?
So many layers and tangents to the story of each life. So many conflicts and questions, great fears and desires. Which ones will get her killed? Which ones will make the revolution? Will they be one and the same? So much paradox — good in bad, bad in good. There’s too much story in her story and her life there in Iowa. She wants to choose the chapters herself, not be written by them by the forces of life.
Will she achieve her goal? Will she change the world or herself in doing so? Who all will change? And what? And when? Should not all literature, all life be a search for revolution? Is revolution the ultimate home? Is the search, this great wander, not all a revulsion toward something better? An attraction to the light?
Can not all good stories, all great lives, be revolutionary? Lives of great action and love? Is revolution the essential gesture? Is love? Is action? Is story? Is life? Does the good life lead to great revolution? How can it be otherwise in a potentially terminal day and age?
Even in Iowa.
Especially in Iowa.
And what of the dormant and ever-growing life in her orchards and greenhouse?
Are the great successes of her garden beds and orchard plots not her real story, her real love, her real place of action in the world, her real life?
How can a gardener, a grower in Iowa in the middle of Turtle Island be a national and even global revolutionary? It makes no sense.
The old farmhouse window reflects Sabia darkly.
Sabia rips off the tape that flattens Castelan to the floor of the kitchen.
Who has time for philosophy when you've got shit to deal with?
Sabia ties off the coil of hemp rope and slings it over her arm.
She grabs Castelan by his ankles and drags him to the cellar door.
She pulls him down the steps.
Castelan does his best to keep his head from banging on the boards as he drops.
Sabia opens the door to the hidden passageway leading to the mudroom. She hauls him down those steps as well.
Then she pulls Castelan through the door to the mudroom of the underground home.
Sabia steps on his ribs to see how he likes it. He curls into a ball.
She hates his presence in her home.
“Sit up,” she commands. When he flounders, she grabs the hair on his head with both hands and yanks him into position.
Then she ties him by his neck to a rough-hewn support beam in the great room. He looks half hung though is merely secured.
Sabia fills a glass of water at the sink. “Got to keep you alive for your further descent into Hell. Won’t that be fun,” she says.
She rips the tape off his mouth and holds the glass while he drinks.
“I need some pills for the pain,” says Castelan. He dares nod to his shoulder, blasted by Roca with the shotgun, and tediously repaired by Jenna. Jenna Ryzcek — too-kind nurse and water protector, prosecuted and charged by Castelan’s FBI as a terrorist. The fucking irony. Jonathan Swift where are you when we need you now?
“A bullet to the head is the only medicine I would give you,” says Sabia. “After what you did to me. One bullet would cure you for all time.”
“How did you capture Silver during the blizzard?” says Castelan. “And before the bombing?” He is desperate to talk, and to keep Sabia talking.
Sabia looks down in disgust. Who knew that babysitting the President of the United States of America and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be so entirely distasteful.
“Silver wanted a fucking photo op,” she tells Castelan. “So she had her boys bring her dumb ass with Lin to me and Roca when Ground Force One got stuck in the blizzard. Photos with the local denizens, for her greater glory. She got pictures, alright. Not of the denizens. Of her own sorry ass deep in a cave of her own making.”
“You killed the Secret Service guards.”
“You’re the killer, Castelan. Not me. It was a Secret Service screw-up — those boys are talented, are they not? They left Silver and Lin alone with me and Roca the moment the bombs hit — the work of your white supremacist Navy crew. Blasted everyone in and around your precious Ground Force One. But not Roca and me, not Silver and Lin, safe and secure here in our underground home. It was your very own mass murderers who killed everyone and not the ones they wanted to. An old story, no? The ‘damage’ they call ‘collateral’.”
Sabia sweeps her hand around the great room. Spare by design, bountiful by supply, Earthen by nature, beautiful by special touch. The place never felt so angular and able to defend itself as it does now with the enemy right there.
“This is my home,” says Sabia. “You think you can beat me and pry me out of here with a crowbar? Or would you demolish me with one of those 2000 pound bombs you drop on Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea? You insane and murderous fucks. I’m sure you can get as many of those bombs as you need. They make them by the Hudson River in New York. What a proud part of the national economy.”
“Oh, they’ll do it,” says Castelan. “If that’s what it takes to get President Silver back. They’ll nuke the whole fucking state. Don’t think the military would hesitate. They would nuke your orchard first thing if that would get Silver back.”
“Nuke my home. I know they would. Hell, they would even nuke you, and look where you are. Very far from any home of your own. You’re a fucking wretch.”
“And you’re a fucking lawless survivalist, Sabia. So, it was really you who kidnapped Silver.” Castelan keeps trying to think it through. He can hardly believe it. This little girl? The one who’s too small, too pert, too young to be taken seriously? The one with the garish mouth and the flagrant power fist tats? “I thought it was the tribe,” he says. “The real fucking water protectors. Turns out to be you and Roca. Jesus. And Jenna Ryzcek, though she must have come later. Who else? You won’t tell me.”
Sabia strokes the hemp rope and tries to decide if Castelan is bound tight enough. She wraps an extra loop around his neck. Looks good, feels good.
“The Revolution does what needs to be done,” says Sabia. “I like to think it’s the entire country holding Silver for ransom until she renounces her policies of death, until she makes the People whole.”
“You won’t get away with this, Sabia Perez. Not one ounce of it.”
“Who will right all the wrongs, Castelan? Who will even negotiate? You either take power, or you get taken by it. That’s why the only legitimate power in this world is the power of the People. The power of the most vulnerable. Not the power of wealth, the big donors, the police, the militaries, the thugs.”
Sabia extends an end of the rope toward Castelan. She looks as if she is going to whip him with it.
“We already won, anyway, Cowboy. And more winning to come. I survived the horror that is you. You’re done, and nothing can stop the revolution now.”
Castelan pulls against the rope. “This can’t last. The entire security state is searching for you. They have one goal. And they will get you and put an end to you, and to everything you think you’ve accomplished.”
“It’s not about me, Castelan. Revolution is eternal. There’s no end to it. My life is irrelevant.”
“Go ahead, martyr yourself, Sabia you phony hero. They will let you. Everyone would like that.”
“Fuck you,” says Sabia. “No one tells me what to do.”
Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” is more than a century old. Sabia and Jenna and Jasmine would recite it to each other in the days before striking their blows on behalf of the planet and the People. Sabia shouts the poem in Castelan’s face now:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Sabia loves Claude McKay’s great novel Banjo too — a free-loving tour de force set in the port city of Marseille on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, a still beautiful part of the world that Sabia would like to see some day.
Inspiring works from a great and socially engaged artist: “If We Must Die,” Banjo, and another one of his poems with bite, “The White House” — especially in its several great opening and closing lines. Sabia raps the poem at the fugitive FBI Director bound before her:
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
“Except I don’t hold to your so-called law anymore, Castelan. You’re the outlaw. Not me.”
Sabia slams the duct tape back onto Castelan’s mouth. She stands over him.
“White Empire. Fuck white Empire. Fuck Empire of all kinds.”
Sabia leaves Castelan to his incapacitation, his impotence, his misery.
She needs to deal with Tucker Gere.
So many men, so many problems.
Goddamn it. Sabia climbs the basement steps to the farmhouse first floor. Studies show that those who walk up and down sidehills each day to socialize or to otherwise get around on mountainside towns live longer. Shit, Sabia will be immortal at this rate.
Up top, she finds no Jenna and Roca, not yet. Only Tucker.
Tucker wonders what in Hell he has gotten himself into.
Now what? Sabia feels the truth of it then — that all story is action, in fact. And life is story. One gut-wrenching experience after another. And her story is a kind of endless action with too many acts to bear that must be borne. And less and less time for love.
Fuck.
Does not the great act of revolution require an equally great amount of love — at least for life?
Hickory, oak, walnut, pawpaw, orange, fig — what is not to love in the good fruits and nuts of the world?
Avery, Jenna, Roca, Jasmine, Mamá, Papá — who is not to love in the good people of our lives?
Sabia thinks of Silver and Lin trapped far beneath her — and Castelan tied below — and Tucker bound beside her. And Jenna and Roca, burning a car on the lake, and struggling home through storm.
Sabia thinks of Jasmine Maldonado, her compañera, water protector. And convicted criminal — what a joke. Sabia wants Jasmine by her side again. Jasmine and about a million others. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. Right there in fucking Iowa taking on the world.
The storm at Rathbun Lake blows snow over the burnt hole in the ice. Snow buries the tire tracks of the sunk car and the footsteps of Jenna and Roca, leading to and from the lake and the boat launch parking lot, near Bohn Cemetery.
Rogue FBI Director Maximilian Castelan's getaway vehicle to Iowa is gone — Tucker Gere's car — it cools at lake bottom, after Roca and Jenna torched it on top. Snowfall erases their deed, vanishes all, even the big lake itself.
The storm takes the universe into an endless time-stop — a unified sensation, perception, conception — the kind of out-of-body aura that Jenna reached once via meditation, an all-encompassing singular focus.
Not easy to pull the entire universe into your mind. Much easier to dissolve your body and brain into a storm that fills the world. Into the ghost life.
Jenna never felt the need, nor compelled, to work her way toward that meditative singularity again, though she saw how it might be worth it.
And she reached this point one other time too, while doing the hardest work of her life — a forty-eight hour stretch in the emergency room, covering for a friend suffering her own emergency, and then staying on during a swarm of tornadoes that made work the only place to be and the only thing to do — to stay awake and save lives.
Tonight the white twisting wraith fills the universe and seems to want to chase them off the planet, to get them to go away, or to sleep and to freeze and never wake up, to sedate them, to stop burning things, stop racing for their lives.
Jenna and Roca watch where the car has burnt and ice melted. They think of the depths to which they put it, where no one might ever find.
Jenna reaches out to Roca. “You okay?”
Roca looks cold, wiry, alert, old as the prairie, older. His face, ice-bitten.
“Rathbun Lake,” says Roca. “Crime scene.”
“Revolutionary expanse,” says Jenna.
“It would be good to revisit this lake in summer. In the growing season,” says Roca. “No matter if I'm still dead. Maybe especially then. It would be worth the risk. To see the waters live, blue-green.” The open dream of life. Unfrozen.
“We need to think about tomorrow, first,” says Jenna. “What will people make of the hole in the ice?”
“What hole?” says Roca. “Come morning the lake will be totally frozen and wind-blown. Hard to say how many bodies are buried out there. Rathbun Lake. They call it ‘Iowa’s Ocean’ for a reason. And this is Iowa — not Des Moines — there's no people everywhere.”
“We buried no bodies, Roca. We killed no one.”
“Not yet.”
Jenna cannot help but think through all possible complications. “What if a hobbyist on the lake shore somewhere is filming us through infrared camera or something?”
Roca shrugs.
“Fuck ‘em,” he says. “Insurance fraud. We could be anyone. Kids out tanking a car for the Hell of it. Nothing to lead back to Tucker Gere. No missing person report filed anywhere near Iowa. No one to miss. Could be spring or later before anyone dives for a look, if ever. We need to go.”
Jenna dusts snow off Roca and from her own stocking cap and coat before they climb in the truck — Jenna behind the wheel.
“What kind of world have we gotten Sabia into — that’s what I worry,” says Roca. “What kind of life can she look forward to now? And you, Jenna. It's my fault, I think.”
“You make her proud, Roca. Your nieta is a revolutionary. That's all she cares about.”
“She's a grower like me. But you should have seen her. She knocked me down when I tried to stop her from holding Silver.”
“She’s a woman of conviction. Half my age, twice my compulsion. When she moves, she moves. There’s no stopping her. It’s not your fault, Roca. What’s done is done. We can only cover for Sabia now. However she acts.”
Jenna holds out her hand, and Roca gives her the keys. Jenna starts the truck. Lights on. Brake off. Heater high. The snow is dry, a relief, as Jenna is able to clear the windshield with the wipers. She shifts into four wheel drive. Storm engaged.
“First, there were two hostages,” says Roca. “Then none when Sabia freed Silver and Lin to get me to the hospital.” Roca reviews the body count. “Then two again when Silver decided to stay ‘captive’ for the poll ratings to secure her re-election. Then three hostages, tonight, with Castelan. Now four, with Tucker. And you are in hiding too, Jenna. Sabia told the world I was killed in the bombing of Ground Force One. So we’re six ghosts in a farmhouse, on our Iowa farmstead. Plus, Sabia.”
“Beats prison,” says Jenna. Who knew the American Liberation Alliance could be so ethereal and so powerful all at once?
“What are we doing? Where does this end?” says Roca.
“Ask Sabia.”
“Can she even know? We hang onto her for dear life,” says Roca. “But is that fair? Shouldn’t we be finding a way out for her?”
“Sabia would never forgive you for killing the revolution, Roca, or forcing her out of it.”
Roca gestures at the frozen expanse as Jenna drives through the parking lot. “What kind of revolution is this? It’s ice-cold Iowa.”
“Sometimes you gotta blow shit up to make way for the new, Roca.”
“Which leads where? Prison? That's no kind of life.”
Jenna taps the steering wheel, as if to reassure herself. She steers from the snowy parking lot onto the snowy road where white is dark and dark is white and all is frozen and slick.
“It's what we were born into, Roca. Maybe not you. But us. Me and Sabia. And Jasmine. And Alecta too. It’s where the world is now. Or should be. Revolution or bust. It’s not like we have a choice.”
“No, you did choose,” says Roca. “And I admire that. I’m amazed by what you chose. I can’t quite understand it.”
“Did we though?”
“You did. You all did. Maybe most people don’t know to fight back. Or simply won’t. I know I'll be gone soon. You kids are gonna have to live with this world.”
“We just do what needs done, Roca. You did the same in your own way, in your own time. And now here you are. With us. That was real smooth the way you flew that car onto the ice.”
"It was like tobogganing through the orchard with Sabia years ago.”
“Something to see.”
“Get us home to that girl, Jenna. She needs you. Our home is your home now. Forever.”
“Let’s see how long we can make forever last, Roca. Gracias.”
“The old days are gone,” says Roca.
The storm plunges against the windshield in icy white streaks.
“It’s all gone.”
Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez insists on the Cabinet Room rather than the Oval Office to meet House Speaker Barry Bombarill and president pro tempore of the Senate, Richard Goldnut.
“Why?” says Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier.
“Elbow room,” says Alecta. “We’re gonna need it all today.”
Shakeeta has no idea what Alecta means but the event goes as the President wishes it to go, or it does not go at all.
Alecta thinks this is the type of meeting that may determine her Presidency. She intends that it go exactly as she likes.
Ideally, the moment and its aftermath will be revolutionary. If not that, then what is the point of her being in power for the People?
The Cabinet Room is nearly 30 feet by 40 feet with a sleek oval mahogany table, all-but filling it. Alecta orders the tallest chair, the President’s chair, be moved from the traditional center of the long eastern side of the table to the compact curve of the south end. She will not face today the long windows to the west that overlook the Rose Garden. No one will. And her staff will both flank and front her in a tight strong arc.
Alecta takes her seat. To her left sits her Constitutional Law Advisor Iris Aetos and Press Secretary Tisha Noori. Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier sits on her right.
From the West Wing hallway, Presidential Aide and part-time speechwriter, Malcolm Xavier escorts Representative Barry Bombarill and Senator Richard Goldnut through the main doors at the far north end of the table and conference room, where these two distinguished officials have no choice but to sit, more than three dozen feet apart from Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez, and her iron-faced staff.
Speaker Bombarill and president pro tem Goldnut are the next two officials in line of succession to be President, after Alecta — a fact lost on no one in the meeting.
Alecta knows that these good old boys have come to play their good old game of hardball. A pity, as she has disposed of all the bats and gloves, balls and bases. And there is no umpire in the room but her.
Malcolm Xavier, by prior arrangement, takes a seat next to Chief of Staff Glazier.
There are no greetings.
They are five against two.
Senator Goldnut being of the same party as the Acting President feels the discomfort perhaps most keenly. “Madame President—” He attempts to greet Alecta, but she holds up her left hand, silencing him.
“What do you want?” she says.
“My office aides,” says Speaker Bombarill. “I want my Chief of Staff in here by my side for this presentation.”
As the lone Republican in the room, Speaker Bombarill does not like being outnumbered six to one, or, if counted in alliance with Democrat Senator Goldnut, five to two.
“That is not going to happen,” says Alecta. “My own Chief of Staff, Constitutional Law Advisor, Press Secretary, and Office Aide — that is, Shakeeta, Iris, Tisha, and Malcolm — have all agreed to hear and consider what you two might have to say, Speaker, Senator. And no one else.”
“What's he doing here?” says Bombarill, pointing at Malcolm.
“That's none of your business,” says Alecta. Then she glances to her right. “Malcolm?”
“Ma'am?” says Malcolm.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ma'am, you asked me to sit in to take notes, and to provide some muscle.”
Shakeeta laughs. She does not even bother to cover her mouth. Malcolm is the skinniest person in the room and far from the tallest. He also wears glasses and knows nothing about boxing, wrestling, martial arts, self-defense, guns, knives, or, even, calisthenics.
“Do you feel strong today, Malcolm?” says Alecta.
“Very much so, Ma'am.”
“You look strong.”
“Thank you, Ma'am. Feeling good.”
Alecta's entire end of the table is smiling and laughing now, while Speaker Bombarill and Senator Goldnut are grim and pouty.
“This is going to be a great meeting, Malcolm, thank you,” says Alecta. Then she redirects her focus to the far end of the table. “What do you want, Speaker Bombarill, Senator Goldnut?”
“I find this set-up to be insulting,” says Bombarill.
“Well, fuck you,” says Alecta. “I find you to be insulting. What do you want? I won't ask again.”
Speaker Bombarill puts both hands on the table. He appears to be ready to push back in his chair and get up to leave.
Senator Goldnut puts a hand on Bombarill’s arm, silently urging him to remain where he is. Goldnut believes there are crucial points to be scored here today, no matter how tough the competitor and the conditions.
That said, Senator Goldnut begins to reconsider his intended approach. He and and Bombarill had expected to first petition the Acting President before pressuring her, but he did not anticipate being hit in the face with outright obscenity. Goldnut, like Bombarill, wonders if the meeting is over even before it begins. He determines to find out.
“Uh, Ma'am,” says Senator Goldnut. “Speaker Bombarill and I are here to offer a truce of sorts.”
“No truce,” says Bombarill. “Never a truce.”
“So we are at war then,” says Alecta.
“Uh, no, Ma'am, we have differences of opinion,” says Senator Goldnut. “Slightly different interests, I believe—”
“Different objectives entirely,” says Speaker Bombarill.
“Go ahead if you must,” says Alecta. “Issue your threat.”
“Uh, Ma'am, no threat, you see, it's an offer, really, that, well, Speaker Bombarill and I, on behalf of the House of Representatives and the US Senate—”
“Wait for it,” says Shakeeta.
“We need you to back off meeting the list of ransom demands by executive order,” says Goldnut.
“Or else what?” says Alecta. “And — why?”
“Because their big donors demand it,” says Shakeeta.
“These matters are properly administrated in the realm of Congress, Madame President,” says Senator Goldnut. “Health care, education, wages, military, crime, security, climate, immigration, civil rights—”
“Separation of powers, Senator. You do your thing in Congress, and I do mine in the Executive Office.”
“You have no legal authority—” says Bombarill.
“Actually, the Acting President has plenty of legal authority,” says Iris Aetos. “Her authority includes the full powers of the office.”
“Speaker and Senator,” says Alecta. “I introduce you to my Constitutional Law Advisor, Iris Aetos.”
“Not only does the President have the authority to provide for the health and well-being of the American people,” says Iris, “Congress has the obligation to fund it.”
“No, that's entirely not—”
“Moral?” says Aetos, cutting off Bombarill.
“It's not legal,” says Bombarill.
“No one governs like you govern, Madame President,” says Senator Goldnut. “The roles and responsibilities of Congress—”
“Have largely been abdicated in a derelict display of both impotence and aggression against the American people and the Peoples’ of the world,” says Alecta. “So it’s a new day, a new dawn, Senator Goldnut.” Alecta spreads her arms wide. “All our lives are on the line. Besides, there’s much precedent for what we do in my administration, and anyway any administration that is not creating new good precedent is dead. Dead on arrival. Dead as a doornail. Dead and buried. That’s not my way, Senator. That’s not how I govern on behalf of the People.”
“It’s not legal,” says Bombarill. “The US government must never yield to blackmail, to hostile actors. Terrorists. These kidnappers’ demands—”
“You seem like a hostile actor to me, Speaker,” says Alecta.
“Our expert opinion,” says Iris, “is that providing for the health and well-being of the American people by executive action is both moral and legal.”
“The courts will strike it down. The courts—”
“You don't speak for the courts,” says Alecta. “Is there a member of any court here today? Speak for yourself, Bombarill, or don't speak at all. I don't have that kind of time. Nor the inclination to indulge in bullshit.”
“How often are you going to curse here today, Madam President,” says Speaker Bombarill. “Acting President. Could you be more unprofessional?”
Alecta points at Bombarill and turns to her Press Secretary, Tisha Noori. “Who the fuck is this guy?” she says loudly. “Who the fuck does he think he is?”
Tisha shakes her head. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Speaker Barry Bombarill, Ma'am.”
Alecta looks at Speaker Bombarill as if she does not quite recognize him. Nor cares to.
“Okay. A pissing match,” says Goldnut. “Who would’ve thought? Madame President—” Senator Goldnut determines to salvage something by force now. “Madame President, we need — Congress needs a reasonable compromise on your part, or we move to impeachment proceedings. There. That’s where we’re at.”
“Oh, finally,” says Alecta. “The threat. What a surprise.”
“It's not a threat, Ma'am. It's reality,” says Goldnut. “The House, as you know, is run by the Republicans and Speaker Bombarill. They could impeach you within a week. Then the trial in the Senate would go quickly too. A two-thirds majority vote to convict, and you are removed from office. It’s not only likely. It’s certain.”
“You would vote to convict me, Senator Goldnut, a member of your own party? We Democrats control the Senate. So, the Senate would oust me and hand the Presidency to the Republicans by line of succession? I don't believe it for one second. The Republican Speaker is next in line. You would never do that.”
Speaker Bombarill smiles. “They might,” he says.
“Uh, no, we would not. Probably — no,” says Senator Goldnut. “However, Ma'am, prior to your conviction and removal by the Senate, Speaker Bombarill has graciously offered to yield the House Speakership — temporarily — to the most conservative Democrat in the House: Spike Fosselbars. Representative Fosselbars would become President, given your removal.”
“Oh, shit,” says Tisha.
Everyone knows that Representative Fosselbars stands politically to the right of even President Silver, by miles. And in fact, Fosselbars votes with the Republicans in Congress more than half the time.
“It’s true,” says Bombarill. “We do have the votes for that, and we will make that happen.”
“Fosselbars votes to the right of me, no less, you realize,” says Senator Goldnut, underscoring the dire reality.
“You would risk this coup before the election, Senator?” says Alecta.
“It's not a coup, Ma'am. And it's not a risk. We can expect an orderly transition of power.”
“You would lose the election, Senator. If people are forced to vote for a white supremacist fascist police state, they will vote for the dominant supremacists in the country: that's the Republican brand and we all know it,” says Alecta. “Fosselbars will lose the election, and even if by some miracle he doesn't, then we all lose anyway.”
Speaker Bombarill smiles knowingly. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your pissant words will never hurt me. There, how’s that for cursing. Facts are facts,” he says. “Rescind all your executive orders. Or you will be removed.”
“Facts come and go at your convenience, Speaker. With the both of you. Better fascist than progressive, isn’t that right, Senator Goldnut. Obvious all along. And now here it is in full. Why did you two even bother to show up today? Why not simply go ahead and get rid of me? Appearances, I suppose.”
“Damned if I know.” Speaker Bombarill throws up his hands. “The Senator insisted that he and I speak with you first. To see if you might be open to reason. I tried to tell him—”
“Reason such as what?” says Alecta. “What do you offer? Where is your offer?”
“To not impeach you,” says Bombarill.
“Drop your demands,” says Goldnut.
“You offer nothing, then. They're not my demands.”
“You've made them your own,” says Goldnut.
“You threw in your lot with terrorists,” says Bombarill. “You deserve what’s coming to you.”
“You really are the terrorist, aren't you, Bombarill,” says Alecta. “Your terror is the cruel and deadly policies that you slice into people's throats. So don’t speak to me of terror. You throw stones from a filthy rich and bloody glass house, every time you speak of terror. Every single time.”
“I told you this was a waste of oxygen,” Bombarill says to Goldnut.
“Madame President,” says Senator Goldnut. “Everything you push for will be defeated in the courts or go unfunded by Congress. Speaker Bombarill and I merely request that you cease and desist from pursuing further satisfaction of the demands. There is not even any indication that the kidnappers will release President Silver and Ellen Lin. President Silver will need to be rescued the old-fashioned way — by intelligence and special forces.”
“I'll take it under advisement,” says Alecta. “That is all, Gentleman.”
“Madame President, are you willing to withdraw your executive orders — or even any single one?” says Goldnut.
“No,” says Alecta. “Senator Goldnut, are you willing to meet any of the demands to free President Silver?”
“One or two, we could partially consider.”
“Ridiculous,” says Shakeeta.
“Speaker Bombarill, are you willing to meet any of the demands to free President Silver?” says Alecta.
“No,” says Bombarill.
“Well, then, Senator Goldnut — we see who wears the pants in your relationship with the Speaker. Not you, is it.”
Speaker Bombarill nods to Senator Goldnut. “Let's go, Richard. Time is money. And there's clearly none of that to be had around here.”
“Madame President, will you simply put on the brakes for now with the Presidential orders?” says Senator Goldnut. “A judicial pause so to speak, to give time for Congress to rally and act. Who knows — with the election in eight months, anything might be possible. In the meantime, Speaker Bombarill and I can help you. We can tweak a few things. And I can get you and President Silver four more years in office.”
“You’re so delusional.” Alecta sets her hands flat on the table. “Or a professional liar. Senator Goldnut, I’m not sorry to say that I want freedom, justice, and equality for all. And I want it pretty goddamn close to now. Malcolm. See the officials out.”
“Yes, Ma'am. My pleasure, Ma'am.”
By the time Malcolm walks the length of the table, Bombarill and Goldnut have pushed back from their chairs and gone through the main egress of the Cabinet Room into the reprieve and escape of the West Wing hallway.
Malcolm follows.
Speaker Bombarill flips his right wrist and elbow and throws his arm angrily at the empty Oval Office. Then he and Senator Goldnut head to the lobby. Malcom watches them go out the usual way, toward the main entrance, intense in their plots and plans to retake power from the Acting President — the ambitious and progressive, outraged and active Alecta O’Roura-Chavez.
Alecta stands and faces north the long length of the Cabinet Room.
She paces then behind Shakeeta, Trisha, and Iris still seated there at the south end.
Malcolm returns. “That’s that, Ma’am. All gone.”
“Excellent. Let’s continue.” Alecta gestures Malcolm to his seat. The four allies turn their chairs to face Alecta.
“So there it is,” says Shakeeta. “Congress is determined to remove you from office by impeachment and conviction — because they don’t like progress for the People. It's a coup. What do we do now?”
“We coup the coup,” says Alecta.
“How’s that?” says Trisha.
Iris Aetos nods. “That’s not what it is, but that’s exactly what your opponents and enemies will call it. I prefer to think of it as revolutionary progress.”
“We become unimpeachable,” says Alecta.
“I don't see it,” says Tisha.
“My girl is about to drop the hammer,” says Shakeeta. “About time.”
“Even without impeachment, they think they've won because no funding mechanism is in place to pay for everything I ordered and want to order. Universal health care especially. Debt relief. Universal basic income. Housing. New Green Deal projects — climate protection and cleanup — infrastructure and regenerative agriculture. Childcare and community investment. And on and on and on. ‘Heads’ they win, ‘tails’ I lose. They think I’m trapped.”
“Are you?” says Tisha.
“Cornered,” says Alecta. “Big difference. I’ve still got all my claws.”
“Even as they stop you by not funding your orders, they don't like the precedent you set,” says Iris Aetos. “They don't like that you command authority, they don't like that you open your mouth, plant ideas, make things happen, and, as they say, exceed your authority. So you need to go, by impeachment and conviction. But what if you were able to fund everything immediately. Real dollars in people's pockets. Change lives, uplift communities. The effect would be huge. You would be unimaginably popular. Too popular to impeach. And you could even help people to understand who to vote out of office eight months from now during the election. That's how you coup the coup.”
“Social change.”
“Revolutionary change.”
“Popular change.”
“Which means exactly what?” says Tisha.
“It's the only way, a great way,” says Alecta.
“But how to make it work? Where do the funds come from?” says Tisha. “New money can't come from the President. Only Congress can approve and create funding.”
“Iris, tell them,” says Alecta.
“The funds will come from country's smallest bank,” says Iris. “Mountainview National. In Colorado.”
“Come again?” says Tisha. “The smallest bank?”
“How small?” says Shakeeta.
“Several million dollars in assets. That’s it,” says Iris.
“You fund the revolution with the nation’s smallest bank?” says Tisha.
“Exactly.”
“So, then I'm questioning my sanity. And everyone else will question ours.”
“That’s it,” says Alecta. “Keep thinking, keep doubting, keep working. We ask questions and we try to answer those questions. We think on our own, and we think in groups. This is no faith-based make-believe little shop of bullshit that we’re running here. We learn, we work, and we power through, and we help others learn — trial and error. That's life. That’s thinking. That’s learning. Actions and questions and answers.”
“Good speech. So we’re all scholars now,” says Shakeeta. “But let's skip over the doubting and questioning part and get to how it all works. How can it happen? The nation's smallest bank, in Colorado, Mountainview, will fund massive revolutionary investment in the people? No one will go for that.”
“Wait a week,” says Iris Aetos. “Arrangements are being made. Mountainview is struggling to balance its books. The Acting President will allocate emergency funds to make all of Mountainview's depositors whole, and close out all accounts. In exchange, the bank agrees to transfer its ownership to a board handpicked by Alecta that will begin to scale up to function as a much larger bank, a National Credit Agency really, that will extend credit — technically loan write-offs — loans that will never be repaid — to pay for the President's many executive orders. The US President cannot create money out of thin air to credit into any given account, but that's exactly what the big private banks do, thereby increasing the money supply at their own profiteering whim — to finance yachts and luxury homes and vanity projects and business schemes of fraud and greed and destruction, rather than to provide funds to meet the needs of the People.”
“But the big banks get paid back,” says Shakeeta.
“Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't,” says Alecta. “And when they don't, they simply write off the loss and extend another loan. That is, the big banks make up more money out of thin air and deposit it as electronic funds in some other private account. Either way, this new money circulates or sits in bank accounts of the wealthy, often to useless or destructive effect. But the new Mountainview money, on the contrary, will pay for needed goods and services: health care, housing, education, debt relief, childcare, climate care, food care, animal care, basic living expenses, and go to workers and producers and creators in those vital fields that make for good lives and good things to happen for the many people, and to create a land that is healthy and civil and prosperous, comprehensively so, for the first time in history.”
“Whoa!” says Shakeeta. “Dream on, Sister.”
“We plan it out, and then go trial and error to organize finances for a change for the People,” says Iris Aetos. “Not for the big donors, the big owners, the big investors, the already fucking rich. Fuck them. They don’t need help from the banks. The People do. And so does the planet.”
“But Mountainview National? The smallest bank in the country,” says Tisha. “Look, I'm the one going out there in the press room to try to explain everything to everyone. How can I say that? How can I explain the legality?”
“What is legality in a corrupt banking and political system that rigs everything for the wealthy?” says Alecta. “Sometimes to be outlaw is to be new law that we need to fight for.”
“Madame President,” says Tisha. “I can't tell the media that we are establishing an outlaw banking system.”
“It’s a credit agency really,” says Alecta.
“A modest agency moving massive funds,” says Iris.
“Look,” says Trisha. “I don’t think I could explain this even if it was merely ten dollars — let alone ten trillion dollars of magic money, is what it sounds like.”
“Money is magic,” says Alecta. “I can accept that. About time somebody said it. Thank you, Tisha. We need a little more magic in our lives, don’t you think?”
“Listen. Here's how it works,” says Iris. “Mountainview is a tiny private bank that has agreed to Alecta’s emergency funds buyout. And it will now scale up and function as basically the National Bank for Executive Orders. But it acts on its own basis, with the President’s input but not at the President’s command. It’s a private bank, after all. Since the big private banks make up money out of thin air to extend as loans that they then write-off if they don't succeed, so too can Mountainview. Since Mountainview has no creditors, there is no reserve requirement. No assets are needed because none are at risk. By its new bylaws, the bank is obligated to extend credit upon direction of its board to fund the goods and services of the nation, with special consideration given to Presidential Directives, where Congress has failed to act to meet the needs, the human rights, of the People. Those are its new bylaws.”
“How will it not be shut down by regulators?” says Shakeeta.
“This is the best part,” says Alecta. “I appoint all the financial regulators. At the Federal Reserve. At the Treasury Department. At the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. At the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I also appoint the directors at the federal agencies that will use and distribute most of these funds — including the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Plus the Health Resources and Services Administration for community health centers, and the Administration for Community Living for older adults and individuals with disabilities. Of course, I also appoint all the members of the Cabinet that direct the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Departments of Education, Housing, Health and Human Services, Labor, Commerce, Transportation, Defense, Interior, Justice, Energy, Agriculture, and more. These Directors will all go along to get along, for the People, or they will be replaced by those who will. All the financial regulators will make an exception for this publicly-oriented private bank — Mountainview Credit Agency — founded in this terrible time of national, global, and planetary emergency.”
“And its sister bank, Skyview,” says Iris.
“Wait — what’s Skyview?” says Tisha.
“We’ll get to that,” says Alecta. “Maybe not today. For now, think of it as everyone’s favorite retail checking and savings bank — or better yet, credit union. Remember, all the banks in the Federal Reserve system are private too. Like Mountainview. Like Skyview. The point is — I nominate and regulate all the regulators.”
“That’s basically true,” says Iris. “The US President appoints the leaders of all these agencies, and, though not all at once, she appoints all seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which administers the private banking system.”
“Congress,” says Tisha, “will never approve your new appointees, Madame President. And Congress must approve each and all. You know this.”
“Yes but no,” says Iris. “By law the US President’s temporary appointees can serve for 210 days or until rejected by Congress. And we can drag out that process. At which point, Alecta can install other temporary appointees. Will it be easy? No. Will it be without crises? No. Will it be without hostility? No.”
“But this is the fight of our lives. Of all life,” says Alecta. “And we will fight that fight.”
“Won’t all this new spending create runaway inflation?” says Tisha. “They will ask me that.”
“It will not,” says Iris. “The satisfaction of real needs in the economy does not have an inflationary effect. And should corporations retaliate and attempt to impose inflation on the populace by colluding to jack up prices, then that can be controlled by executive order as well. Or by a properly led Department of Justice and its Attorney General.”
“You see,” says Alecta. “Here we go. Because universal health care and other programs will force the insurance industry to contract, and because I'll soon issue a permanent ban on all US arms sales and a drawdown of all US military activity that will force the munitions and military supply industries to contract, the economy will absolutely need this massive social stimulus spending to meet real human needs — individual, community, planetary. I will also ban almost all US sanctions globally, not least the monstrous longstanding sanctions against Cuba. I may not be able to entirely overturn the Congressional sanctions but all the damaging executive office restrictions will soon be gone, which will provide another boon to economic and social opportunity. And there will be no further enforcement of sanctions by my compliant department heads nor by the appointees that I replace for any recalcitrant directors — not in the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the State Department, the FBI, the US Customs and Border Protection, the Treasury Department, and the Justice Department. The directors of these federal agencies will respect my prerogative and authority, or I will exercise my Constitutional authority to replace them. Is that simple and straightforward enough, Tisha?”
“I get it,” says Tisha. “But all the hotshots and careerists will be outraged. The establishment will go berserk. Big money will call for your head.”
“Oh, we know,” says Alecta. “They already do, all the time, every day. It will increasingly remain our duty to remind everyone exactly how lethal and berserk the established policies and establishment investors currently are. And that what we do now, what we newly enact, stops the killing cold. And helps People everywhere with their desperate needs, social rights, and basic aspirations.”
“Let me guess,” say Shakeeta. “To pullback military operations and spending, or to convert it to socially constructive funding and activity at home or abroad, you will also fire any and all stubborn heads of the military and put in temporary appointees.”
“True that,” says Alecta. “A new day. A new dawn. As needed, there will be new leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force. Admiral Bentcan is already toast, as we know.”
“So are we on the cusp of a revolution?” says Tisha. “A second American Revolution — by policy, this time? Not by gun.”
Malcolm, Shakeeta, Tisha, Iris, and Alecta look at each other.
“Sounds good to me,” says Malcolm. “I hate guns.”
“Here’s hoping,” says Alecta. “For our sake. And for that of everyone else.”
“You will be impeached, convicted, and removed by the forces of big money,” says Shakeeta. “How on Earth do you stop that?”
“The people will need to rise to protect me. The people will need to rise to protect themselves.”
“Do you think they will?” says Tisha.
No one in the Cabinet Room responds to that particular question.
Finally, Iris says, “We have a plan for that too—”
“Wait,” says Tisha. “Before you go there — this little national bank in Colorado, Mountainview, will be savaged by big money, big media. How can you trust the owners to distribute funds as you wish?”
“The original owners are on their way out,” Alecta explains. “The condition of the bailout of Mountainview is that the founders sign over ownership to fifteen of the most progressive and least-funded social change organizations in the country. My picks. These modest entities are progressive and socialist mirrors of the departments of my Cabinet, such small groups that they have no big donors to threaten their own organizations by pulling funding. I'm counting on their founding principles and expertise and willingness — and Mountainview’s new bylaws — to scale up to help implement the funding decisions of the bank — in close accordance with my executive orders, and by the careful guidance of my new advisors and new appointees at the federal agencies who will process the funds and implement the changes. That’s how we rebuild society to fully meet the needs of the people for the first time ever. And to Hell with the greed and the extravagance and destruction of the big donors and big investors, the big warmongers, the big capitalists, the big rich.”
“Hard to imagine,” says Trisha. “Corporate media will go wild with condemnation and fury. Lawsuits will fly nonstop.”
“Mountainview Credit Agency and my newly led federal departments and agencies will fight every last lawsuit. The One Tenth of the One Percent will clog the courts and so we too will clog the courts against them. And like the biggest corporations simply ignore or endlessly litigate court orders that they disagree with, on behalf of their owners and investors, so too shall Mountainview and the federal agencies ignore and endlessly litigate nefarious court orders, on behalf of the People. When you’re in power, you need to act like you’re in power, or you’re a fraud. It’s the Peoples’ power after all. Democracy in action.”
“But how does it happen, Alecta?” says Tisha. “The entire Establishment will be against you.”
“And here we get to Phase Two of the plan,” says Iris Aetos. “One that will be implemented soon, immediately upon going public with Phase One that we’ve just described and that is already in the works.”
“A national call to action,” says Shakeeta.
“A national call to action,” says Alecta.
“A national call to action,” says Iris.
“Ma'am,” Malcom interrupts. “You had me record the meeting with Speaker Bombarill and Senator Goldnut. “And I've continued to record. To be clear: do you want all of this discussion on record?”
“All of it,” says Alecta. “These are the fundamental matters of the public. And how do you think you're going to write the initial draft of my forthcoming national and international address, Malcolm?”
“Got it, Ma'am. Just checking.”
“We may have a few other uses for this recording, as well.”
“Okay,” says Malcolm. “As you wish.”
“A national call to action?” says Tisha. “You mean get out in the streets and scream and shout, and hang out windows and bang pots and pans.”
“That might be part of it,” says Alecta.
“My view—” says Iris Aetos. “The most effective national call to action is one that is structured.”
“And funded,” says Alecta. “Bigly.”
“So here's what we do,” says Iris Aetos. She explains to Tisha and the others.
Tisha listens carefully.
Tisha's face slowly bends into a smile that grows, and grows.
“Skyview. No shit,” she says. Her smile is as wide as the sky. “Well. A little extra money in the pocket never hurt anyone. You mean that the national action is that people volunteer to receive money each month in their new accounts created by the Mountainview spinoff bank Skyview, in exchange for performing an act of national service — something of their choosing or modification among the many suggested? In other words, people are being paid to advocate for themselves?”
“Why not?” says Alecta. “Community action takes work. Community service requires time and effort. Of course people should be paid to advocate for themselves, their communities, their planet.”
“The haters will scream,” says Tisha. “Especially because that kind of national action will really bring people out. New money in the pocket on a monthly basis.”
“National restructuring and refinancing. Coupled with regular national actions. Well-funded, both,” says Alecta. “That's what we need. For all the People, all the planet, all life.”
“We won’t know till we try, will we,” says Shakeeta.
“It should make for a whale of a speech, anyway,” says Tisha. “When do you do it?”
Alecta looks again the length of the Cabinet Room. How much sordid history — how much infernal warmongering has gone down in here? Versus how much of a fight for any truly newer and better and greener Great Deal? How much time and effort toward any People’s Revolution?”
“Soon,” says Alecta. “Real soon. Before all hope and the planet is lost.”
And before Sabia gets found out, she thinks.
Before President Silver is sprung loose to once again to crush so much on behalf of the big donors.
Alecta will need to speak soon, before Bombarill and Goldnut succeed in their lighting-fast attempt to impeach and convict and throw Alecta out of power.
Big money would hijack the Peoples’ revolution in a millisecond, if it could, and throw it into the bloody garbage pit of history, ruled by money, for money, of money, against the People, against the would-be ever-living planet Earth that the people love and call home.
Now is the time.
This is the place.
Alecta is the person.
Well — Alecta and Sabia, half a continent apart, neck deep in the fight of their lives — and all life.
Now is the time.
It’s in order.
This is the place.
Everyone knows, or must, and will soon.
Now is the time to win big for all.
People are dying for a change.
Now.
