Crowns and Cabals

by Dina Rae

  “Ah, correction, you do have access to MIT geniuses. My Patriots and I am here to help you. I am only a phone call away, I mean one disposable phone call away. Here. A present. These are disposables.” I handed Raphael a bag of phones and a piece of paper. “Here’s my real number and some of my disposables’ numbers. When you want to say hi, call my real number. When you got something to say that might be flagged, call one of these numbers. I already have your numbers.”

  Raphael looked at the phones and smiled. I taped the numbers on the back of each one. “Patriots, huh? You come up with that, or is this some kind of a Boston thing?”

  “A crew member of mine came up with that right after the jeweler was murdered by Peacekeepers.”

  “Murdered, huh?” He tossed his head back and looked around. “This sounds like suicide.” He studied my face and I didn’t budge. “I have only worked at the college for a few months. What do I do? Approach a student and say, ‘Hey, want to rob some rich fuckers who work for the U.N.?’ Come on, we’ll be stopping New World Order.’ I would probably be reported to the authorities. I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to live? Is that your new goal? Then play it safe. Let’s be honest for one minute, Raph. Ego aside, what do you know how to do? Report the news? Even in the good old days, you weren’t doing that. Like you told me, it’s all propaganda, more now than ever. The truth is whatever the inner circle wants it to be. News is used as a way to brainwash and shape public opinion. Rewrite history. Get and maintain power. At least before the war, we’d hear something real every so often. Nothing is real now. So work away at your shitty job that will soon be eliminated, and then pray that this inner circle of tyrants finds some use for you, a middle-aged man with a chip on his shoulder.”

  “You mean a chip in his forearm, right?” Raphael said.

  “Very funny. Get that removed ASAP! Listen, you’re the one who told me how disposable we all are. We’re disposable alright. Just like these mother fucking phones. We are of use to the world’s power until we’re not. The only way we can fight is by our rules and not theirs. That way we can die by our rules, and not theirs.”

  “Listen, Jax, save the indignation for another recruit. I wanted in from the first margarita. And you’re wrong about me. I thought about killing myself a few times, so death is not even a deterrent. My new job is not about me trying to live or make the best of all of this. I wanted change, just wasn’t sure how. Your idea has merit. If I choose the wrong candidate to recruit, then I just killed myself earlier than I probably would have anyway. You’re giving me all kinds of ideas. Let me finish out the semester. Then I will be in a better position to pick out the right crew.”

  “Will you call them the Patriots?”

  “Ah, you want to expand your franchise! Yes. But in the beginning, I don’t want to reveal that there are more of us out there. So who exactly are we fucking with? Low level bosses? Corrupt mayors, senators, congressmen? Or are we aiming high? Who do you think will make the inner circle of the U.N.?”

  I shrugged. “Time will tell. But I think my boss Maximillian Steele is definitely a player. He already sits in on General Assembly meetings. There’s a few generals making some serious noise in South America. A few international bankers are on my list. A few medical giants have to be contenders. Let’s not forget about some of the royal families still alive. For now, we start at the lower level. We walk before we run, right?”

  Raphael nodded and then asked, “How long are you in Dallas for?”

  “Not long. A day or two at the most. I am here to fix some of the branch’s glitches. Then I’m off to Phoenix.”

  “Will you get your own Patriot division going in Phoenix?”

  I laughed. He was definitely on to me. I would try to recruit in Phoenix as I would also try in Dallas as I already did in Atlanta. But Raphael wasn’t ready to know how reckless I had become. “I hardly know anyone there. I mean, not yet.” We laughed a bit too loud. Another couple on the far side of the beer garden stared at us. “Raph, my head is spinning. I didn’t need that last one. So good to see you.”

  “I’ll call you once I have everything in place. Be careful, Jax. And I love you, as a sister of course. You are all I got left.” We both hugged goodbye.

  “This is a good time to leave. The booze turned us into complete saps. Hey, let me leave you with this. ‘Give us liberty, or give us death.’ Catchy, huh? Good night Raph.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Raphael

  As the world rapidly rebuilt, never again would it match its original beauty. The weather was no longer predictable. Thunderstorms became typhoons around coastal areas. Earthquakes frequently rocked California. And the sun lost its brilliance throughout the country. A light gray day was the best one could hope for. Some days looked the same as night. Temperatures ran extremely high in the South and tundra cold in the North. White snowdrifts took on a pale ashy color making everything look dirty. The media refused to report the dangers of radiation. None of us knew if the water was drinkable or the food was edible, but we risked it all to survive. What we had to live for was still the unknown factor as the world organized under one government.

  Body counts varied. TV experts agreed that three billion people died during the first week of the Third World War, including my Aysa and my unborn son. One year later, reports of one to two billion more died from the radiation. These later deaths were attributed to suburban dwellers who lived by flattened cities around the world.

  America lost several of cities, but much of the South was spared. Texas was untouched. The state became a haven for survivors of the west. Like the rest of the country, the sky was never blue, but sometimes I could see a greenish backdrop with skinny, stringy clouds.

  The U.N. wasted no time in installing an army and a new government. World peace propaganda monopolized the media’s daily news stories. Constant footage of devastated cities around the world aired throughout the day on the only network with daily news. The footage came from drones. Every city looked the same, just piles of ash and rubble.

  Religion became the enemy. The U.N. pointed to Middle Eastern differences and intolerance as the true flashpoint to war. Under the new regime, religion was outlawed. Most people stopped believing anyway.

  I plowed through each day by keeping busy. Suicidal thoughts were pushed to the side. The only reason I had yet to pull the trigger was George. He pulled me up from the grave and gave me hope with his preparations. Jaxie’s advice also helped. Finding a place in this new world might lift me out of my depression. Dallas, the untouched city as some were calling it, was the perfect place to hit the reset button, and it was only a short drive away from the farm.

  I easily obtained a job as a community college instructor, but had doubts on how long it would last. Jaxie flew into town at the perfect time. She had an answer. No, she had The Answer. Revenge.

  I taught the spring semester of 2044. They asked me back for the fall, again teaching Journalism 100 and 200. In a few months, it would be 2045, the second year anniversary since World War III. New World Order was almost complete. There were a few details left to work out. Although America was still called America, that would soon change. The ad hoc U.N. would be given a new name with a new hierarchy of power by the year’s end. These decisions were not made by the people. But this was the beginning, and as Jaxie pointed out, beginnings in anything always have glitches.

  We postwar survivors had expectations thrown at us from the onset. We had a choice of working or going to school. This option gave us a productivity factor which was a number embedded onto our microchips. Those without jobs were brought to work training camps set up around the country. Some exited the camp with a new job. Others never left the camp. We assumed the worst. That’s how the world was-be useful or die.

  My job gave me the life-saving productivity factor, at least for now, but my heart was definitely not in it. The curriculum resembled the same moldy, idealistic script I once studied at Columbia. The course neglected
to address the propaganda and censorship of today’s journalism. I strayed from the lesson from time to time, but remained completely aware that someone was watching.

  Most of these young adults thirsted for knowledge. These men and women were the remnants of the middle class, and they soaked in every syllable of my lectures, textbook readings and notes. Motivation was high, but then students were also given a productivity factor. Those who failed out of college were sent to work camp.

  Most of my students ached for truth and a leader who would help them find it. I was not their man. At this moment in my life, all I gave a shit about was a place in society where I could remain anonymous. A cover. Besides, there were major consequences to truth-telling, and the college demanded that all staff stay within the parameters of the college’s expectations.

  Preston Lakes Community College was on the north side of Dallas. It was one of the few remaining junior colleges in the nation. After the war, most state colleges closed their doors because of bad decisions, debt, and poor management. Poor management was another phrase for theft. The ad hoc U.N. government refused to bail them out.

  The Ivy League schools and some private tech colleges still thrived. Their wealthy donors make sure of it. Of course, they got something in return for their donations-guaranteed job placement for their children. The cost of the tuition kept most young people out. Scholarships for the middle class and poor were obsolete.

  As state universities evaporated, so did America’s student loan program. Again, the program had once been held as a beacon of opportunity for low and middle class students. Not anymore. Money units were the only way one could achieve a higher education.

  The college push used to be a thing. I remember my grandfather pushing me, believing it was a ladder out of poverty. Now college education was endangered as was my job. Soon, I would have to find another cover with another productivity factor.

  My job grew on me as did my students. Their young, fresh faces served as a constant reminder of what I once was. If only I could take them under my wing and turn them into vigilantes, maybe even an army. They could turn the country back to better times, maybe even the world. I wished to tell them about my youth and how every moment of it wasn’t recorded on someone else’s camera. They all could remember a life without a microchip. But were they ever told about a world without computers? My first semester on the job, I risked it all and propositioned the perfect student for Jaxie’s movement. Maybe this semester I could expand.

  Now it was time for the new school year to start. September was even hotter than August. I woke up extra early, put on an old pair of khakis and a white golf shirt, ate a power bar, and headed for the campus. Before locking the door, I took my microchip from the counter and put it in my pocket. I had it removed months ago after Jaxie came to town.

  The handful of corporations alongside the U.N. government quickly set up a Big Brother style of surveillance on all of the leftover world citizens. George Orwell who George, my grandfather, was named after, had coined the Big Brother phrase. The author saw this coming long before the rest of us and warned the world over one hundred years ago in his masterpiece, 1984. He got the date wrong, but not much else. Government control of today exceeded Orwell’s warnings, and things could only get worse. I looked for the book at the college’s library as well as a few local bookstores. To no surprise, no one had it in stock. What other books were now banned?

  I refused to play the sheep. To keep myself out of trouble, I had to plan out every nanosecond of every day. When I didn’t want Big Brother knowing my whereabouts, I left my microchip at home. Conversely, when expected at work or any other public obligation, I brought my chip with me. This had to be done at a nearly perfect rate. If Big Brother was watching, it would look suspicious that my microchip’s whereabouts did not match my physical ones. Then I would be flagged, and my attempts at vigilantism would be over. I would finally be over.

  The walk to campus was a good mile, but it kept me in shape. I still had my battery-operated car. With the help of one of George’s manuals at the farm, I extracted the GPS system before coming to Dallas. GPS evolved into a sophisticated navigation tool that pulled double duty as a tracker on every citizen’s whereabouts in addition to the microchip.

  The U.N. claimed GPS acted as a safety. We could be exonerated from crimes. Missing children could be easily found. We might think twice before doing something wrong. Twelve brave but stupid people protested against the microchips in front of Dallas’s City Hall. They took pocketknives and dug into their skin, picking the chip out of the flesh and throwing it on the ground. Two Peacekeepers, both armed with machine guns, shot them down immediately. The twelve protesters became the example of the consequence of dissent. We were told that unification was the only way to avoid another war.

  My seven-year old Toyota was rarely used. I paid a small fee to keep it in my townhouse’s resident parking lot. Most people didn’t own a car. Cities and suburbs provided much of the transportation needs. Driverless cars now dominated the roads. They were the vehicles of the masses. The elites rode around the country in helicopters and heli-autos or flying cars above the city. Did they have GPS built into their batteries? They lived by a different set of rules, but then they always did. Only now it was more noticeable.

  Up in the light gray sky there were three heli-autos as I walked to my class. Small, hovering drones floated beneath the heli-autos, patrolling everything below. My hat and sunglasses hid most of what I looked like.

  Others who walked on the street wore similar attire. Most people resented the eyes in the sky. They went out of their way to look as unidentifiable as possible. I remembered back to when tattoos, pastel colored hair, fashionable clothes and trendy shoes were embraced. Clothes showed individuality, status, and social belonging. Now the fashion industry belonged solely to the elite. Clothes that drew attention and/or admiration were no longer practical.

  I arrived to Preston Lakes Community College, also called PLCC, an hour earlier than my first class. The parking lot was empty. Most of the staff was required to live within walking distance. Students either walked to school or got dropped off. The building was in decent shape. No plans of remodeling were in the works despite the outdated building structure and classroom technology.

  I walked through the long hallway to my class, took out my microchip, and swiped. The microchip also acted as a computerized timecard. If the security team monitored employee attendance and whereabouts within the building, I could be easily found.

  I turned on the overhead projector and pulled down the white screen. Other professors complained about the antiquated technology. They told me how Ivy League schools presented their students with 3-D holograms on 3-D stages from video clips off of their computers.

  I wasn’t envious of the more advanced teaching tools. The old school way still worked fine. In fact, I almost wished we taught the kind of classroom George sat in. He once described his ‘70s and ‘80s classrooms as lecture rooms with teachers scribbling notes with chalk on green chalkboards. Students wrote out the notes by hand into paper notebooks. Sometimes students received paper packets or worksheets to write on. What a glorious time that must have been. No record of anything. Total freedom to teach, discuss, and debate from a diversity of people, all with different viewpoints. The classroom camera took all of that away.

  Despite all of the warnings from deans and provosts, there were still teachers who added their own real-life experiences to the lessons. The administration wasted no time in firing them. That was how I got my job. That’s how Harper Bensen from across the hall got her job. She taught Ancient History 100 and 200. It was how Robert Cleaver got his job two doors down as an instructor for English Composition 100 and 200, as well as Eugene Rybicki who taught Philosophy 100 right above my classroom.

  I checked my student roster. Twenty-five students in the morning class, twenty students in the afternoon class on Mondays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had nineteen students in the mor
ning and eighteen students in the afternoon. Wednesdays I had the lowest enrollment allowed, fifteen students. If one student dropped, the class would be canceled and I would be reduced to a part-time teacher. My classes were even smaller than last semester.

  I opened up the syllabus document which projected onto the classroom screen. Forty minutes were left before class started.

  Harper Bensen who taught ancient world history knocked on my door and then opened it without waiting for my permission. She looked to be somewhere in her late thirties or early forties, a few years younger than me. I suspected she wanted something more than a professional relationship. I wasn’t sure if it was friendship or romance. She was tall, thin, blonde, and very attractive. She looked a little like Jaxie. Maybe that’s why I had not asked her out, or maybe I was still in love with Aysa. It didn’t matter. Romance was not on my agenda. But I liked her.

  “Good morning, Raphael. Glad to see you back. Did you have a nice summer?” Harper asked as she played with her long, golden hair.

  “I did. And you?”

  “I drove up to Galveston with my girlfriend for the weekend and enjoyed the beach. We didn’t go in the water, you know, not sure if it is safe. But we walked on the sand. We were so thankful to get away to simpler times. Couldn’t really afford it, but did it anyway.” Harper hadn’t moved from the door opening. For a beautiful woman, she seemed insecure. But then I was insecure too in the most paranoid way.

  “I know what you mean. I didn’t go anywhere.” That was a complete lie, but I didn’t want Harper to know my personal business. “Harper, are your classes smaller than last year’s?”

  She nodded. A boy crashed into her as he walked through the entrance. Harper gave me a look. I knew that look. The boy was stoned. He had that glazed cast in his eyes like so many young people. I assumed it was some kind of SSRI. My grandfather told me that back in the day people would go to therapy sessions and talk with a doctor about their problems. When I was young that all changed. Pills became the cure-all in modern day psychology. Some people needed them, but others were prescribed drugs just so Big Pharma could make money. After the war, only one big drug company was left, and SSRIs were no longer an aide to one’s hurts, but a necessity to full blown depression. I should have been taking medication, but I chose to self-medicate with booze. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it made me contemplate suicide even more.