We Are Them

by L. K. Samuels

  “It’s private property and the owner does not want you to take it inside,” Rant clearly stated with firm conviction.

  “I suppose.” Tommy backed away.

  “Just drink it here.” Rant put her hand on Tommy’s hand. “Or give it to someone else. Someone not going inside.”

  Tommy and Rant were not meant for each other. It was unnatural. They were at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Rant was a green-blooded Vulcan, cold, logical, and rational; Tommy was a hippy-dippy butterfly, fluttering in twenty directions at the same time. They were similar to Sarah and me, just not very compatible.

  Tommy shrugged, opened the soda and shared it with the whole group of wannabe hippies.

  “The movie is about to start,” Sarah grabbed my hand and pulled. “We don’t want to be late.”

  The movie started out great, but not nearly as good as a strong dose of authentic human drama. During a slow part, Sarah stretched her arm across the back of my seat and stroked my neck. She rubbed my shoulder in just the right place, kneading the sore muscle strings that cried out for attention. It must have been unconscious. She rarely instigated affection. She had rarely put her hands on my shoulder or initiated an affectionate hug.

  As we drove home, I had a feeling that we were not going to sleep in separate bedrooms. What had come over us? Could have that strange fireball caused this anomaly, sprinkling us with a magical fairy dust that made us better, more loving people? That seemed too wild to be considered possible.

  Chapter 8

  Mondays were not the only dread of my life. Office meetings ranked nearly as high on my misery scale. When combined, the two were a living hell. It was like being strapped to a cancer bed, spoon-fed, and kept alive on a ventilator while nurses struggled to clear blockages from my lower intestines. It was the preverbal dental surgery without Novocain. Actually, any of these scenarios were more enjoyable than listening to a political figure drone with insincerity.

  The mayor’s office had just announced an emergency meeting. Everybody was required to attend. The topic of the meeting was not immediately clear. As witnessed by past performances, emergency meetings often became omens of worse things to come, but I still retained an optimistic outlook. This meeting could only mean one thing: the city council had convened over the weekend to consider Big Al’s ridiculous proposal. Of course, I was nearly sure they were going to shoot it down. That was the only sensible course of action. Nobody could be so stupid to think that such a half-baked plan could do anything but set fire to the kitchen and roast the cooks alive, good intentions or not.

  Mayor Jessie Quinn walked into the room and waved to the excited crowd. Some chanted his name as he posed for photographs for the local newspaper. I turned from left to right, wondering why anyone would cheer a second-rate politician before he had had the chance to say one meaningless word. Something was terribly wrong. My fears were quickly validated by an unsettling incident. A dozen armed police officers marched into the back area of the room. Parading in military formation, they lined up against the wall and stood at attention.

  The mayor gripped the podium and glanced out to the assembled hordes of city workers, staff, and managers. Puffing up like a bullfrog, he spoke in a very loud, offhand way.

  “Good morning,” the mayor finally greeted the audience, taking time to clear his throat. “It is my extreme pleasure to announce an expansion of DED. Our esteemed City Council has decided to make a bold statement by introducing a new program to guide disoriented drivers. To enhance the quality of life, we have decided to institute a revolutionary program to save taxpayers time and money. We have passed new ordinances making it mandatory for all citizens to participate in our DED program. I have ordered the hiring of more staff workers. We are in negotiations to rent a large office building down the street. Operation ‘Mandatory Advisory Directions’ or MAD, as we like to call it, will be launched in a few days. I want everyone to work closely with Big Al and make this project an absolute success.”

  The mayor paused, stood back, and smiled proudly, waiting for a reaction from the crowd. Thundering applause soon erupted from the audience. With a greasy smile and a bit more grandstanding, Mayor Quinn continued. “I dare say this is a momentous occasion. We will boldly go where no city has gone before. We will help those who need our service most. In all humility, I can proudly state that never before have so few given so much to so many deserving citizens. I can assure you; we shall make history with this new and exciting program.”

  Of course, everyone clapped even louder after Mayor Quinn’s speech. Half of the audience rushed to the podium, clamoring to shake his hand and give him compliments.

  I froze in place, almost paralyzed, as if suddenly time had stopped and I had turned to hard stone. In fact, it felt as if the future of Hemet or even the world hung in balance. This was sheer madness. What was happening?

  I had to think this through. I knew that the City Council had no authority to approve any measures without weeks of hearings from residents, business owners, civil rights attorneys, and Bert’s howling Hemet Watchdogs. There were a number of statutory laws prohibiting such fast-track laws without public input. I suspected that such limits on city power were buried under mounds of dust in the basement archives. I could guarantee that nobody was searching for them.

  Worse than being illegal, MAD would be a failure at an unheard-of scale. If Phase One had failed due to non-compliance, then Phase Two would likely reproduce the same results. History does repeat itself, usually at the expense of the foolish. I began to sweat and felt nauseated and hot. I had difficulty breathing and wondered if I needed medication. I knew that when all of this was over, someone had to be the fall guy. I began to worry that I was recruited as the possible sacrificial lamb to appease an angry mob or god.

  The evidence was all around me. I had observed that every time a city project failed, the knee-jerk reaction was to throw more money at the problem as if that would actually correct a flawed system. There was no end to the spending cycle. More money meant more failure. The system was rewarding failure and penalizing success. I wondered what they would do if their program ever succeeded—abandon it altogether? That thought unleashed a pounding headache.

  The agonizing part was that Big Al had never received my finished polling data. In fact, I was still working on the final questionnaire. I had neither printed nor handed out any survey results to the public. How could the City Council members know if the citizenry would support such a strange endeavor?

  A sudden chuckle burst crossed my lips. My somewhat analytical mind was starting to kick into gear. This might be an opportunity. I knew how Americans hate inconvenience. Once they understood the implications of MAD, they would storm City Hall and lynch the mayor and Big Al. I wished I could stop this madness. I could become a savior of Hemet. If only I could stop dreaming about getting a bigger pay paycheck for supervising more people.

  As I stood there envisioning a life of wealth and happiness, Tommy grabbed my arms and shook me. He was disrupting my fantasies of swimming in mounds of newly-minted cash. Tommy kept shaking. I kept resisting. With one final shove against a wall, I was thrust back to reality, though kicking and screaming.

  “What?” I growled at my old friend. My eyes narrowed down to slits of rage and hatred. I wanted to stab my dream-destroyer with a Bowie knife. Spear him right through his heartless body. How dare he steal away my precious illusions. “Stop it!” I barked. “Stop harassing me!”

  “Come out of it, man!” Tommy shouted. “Don’t you see what is happening? The freakin’ tards are taking over the city. It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Everybody is acting like mindless drones.”

  “No way!” I pushed Tommy away.

  “The fruit loopers are taking over the city.” Tommy elbowed me from the side. “We’ve got to flee before it is too late.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, still contemplating my soon-to-be- enhanced salary and wondering if I should buy a Lexus or a Me
rcedes Benz. I was partial to silver-blue cars with white racing stripes.

  “Nobody’s going to comply!” Tommy grabbed me and started to shake me again. “Come out of it, man. This is so Nazi retro.”

  “Who cares?” I said, my mind still oozing with thoughts of riches. I want a luxury car. Tommy was going to have to pry my dead fingers from my new car keys. I could almost feel my hair flying freely from a fast-driving convertible. Who was going to stop my dreams?

  With a sudden swung of his hand, Tommy slapped me across the face. It was hard. It hurt like hell.

  “Spencer! Spencer! Earth to Spencer!”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “You are under somebody’s influence.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah…. I don’t know where you have been, but you have to come back.”

  I shook my head and rubbed my sore face. I must have been deep in thought, so deep that I almost got lost. How could that have happened? My dreams never took me for such a long, unscheduled ride.

  “Something has abducted the mayor and all the councilmen,” Tommy said with an alarming tone. “You know, put them under some trance and mind-control drug. Some type of bipolar illness caused by Vivo immunological experiments must have infected them. Abductees have testified to that. They say they were manipulated and hypno-programmed to act in a particular way. That’s what must be happening here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, aliens from other worlds.”

  I stepped back. Tommy was always talking about anal-probing aliens. “They›re just control freaks,” I said. “Nothing alien about that. My own mother would put these yo-yos to shame. She’s an expert on controlling people, especially with food. She’s a certified food pusher.”

  “Whatever!” Tommy’s voice rose. “I won’t do it. I will never call the DED phone line! That’s that.”

  “You know that you’re exempt since you work for the city.”

  Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s even less fair.”

  He was right. Why should city employees be exempt? This was beginning to sound like the old Soviet Union model where the communist bosses were the only ones allowed to patronize well-stocked luxury shops. The peasants got squat. They had to wait for hours to enter state stores with a limited selection of poor-quality goods. Still, my paycheck would be riding high up there with the rest of middle management. I could take that trip to the Caribbean, sweep Natasha off her four feet and leave Sarah behind. It would just be me. I would get a great suntan on the beach, a warm purring cat for my lap, and a cold beer for my thirst. Who could ask for more?

  “No,” I said shaking my head. I had to snap out of my get-rich-quick dreams. This was all wrong. I needed a serious discussion with the pillars of the community. I had to talk to someone about this approaching shitstorm. I needed to know if the mayor’s plan had any community support. If not, we all would be targets of hot tar, cold feathers, and a free ride out of town. “You’re right. This will not work. Come with me.”

  Tommy followed, but seemed perplexed. “You mentioned something about higher pay. Will that include me? And what about retirement benefits? Some city employees get 90% of their salary after they retire. Boy, that’s really a sweet deal!”

  “Forget it,” I said. “We will be lucky to escape the city limits with our scalps.”

  Tommy stopped me. “What do you mean?”

  “When the citizens discover the city’s scheme, they will be after our heads, too. It will be like Bastille Day. The hordes will storm the City Hall and put us before the guillotine. Won’t be pretty.”

  “We›ll just call in the police,” Tommy replied.

  “Not a good idea. The police might ally with the angry mob. They might just shoot us as City Hall sympathizers. If I’m correct, French troops eventually joined the angry mobs that beheaded Louis and Antoinette.”

  “I see.” Tommy rubbed his neck. “Like nobody uses guillotines anymore. Right?”

  “No, they use bullets and tear gas.”

  Tommy swallowed. “Like real bullets?”

  “Duh!”

  * * * * *

  Tommy and I decided to track down Bert Wallace from Hemet Watchdogs. Grapevine rumors spoke of Bert’s return to attending public meetings, despite his debilitating stroke. If he were still wheeling his chair about, he would be attending some obscure city meeting about the sewer system and road maintenance. He would have a good take on what regular citizens were thinking, and yet, I knew his answer beforehand. He and his old geezers would be spitting balls of fire when they learned of the city’s MAD plan of action. They were so tightfisted that they barely spent money on food and clothing for themselves. I knew this because I saw Bert in the same Hawaiian shirt for weeks at a time.

  I flipped through the master calendar and found a sub-committee hearing on storm drains. We rushed over to one of the conference rooms and found him in the back of the room, next to a row of folding chairs and writing something in his frayed notebook.

  I called out his name, but he failed to look up and see who was standing next to him. He did not have to, though; he seemed to know everyone at City Hall by their voice.

  “What do you want, Spencer?” he said without glancing up.

  “Bert!” I sat next to him. “So, you do remember me?”

  “Sure, you’re Spencer from the DED. I know all about you. You’re that kid who flies off the handle and runs around with that goofy hippy.”

  I ignored his remarks. “We’ve learned something important that you should know about.”

  “Like the world is falling apart?”

  “Isn’t it always?” Tommy inserted himself.

  “If we let it,” Bert responded, still engrossed in his scribbling.

  “Listen, Bert.” I tried to get his undivided attention. “The City Council just passed a measure requiring drivers to call in before they select their destination. No hearings or public participation. Blatantly against state law.”

  “I’ve heard about it.” Bert continued to write down figures on the costs of upgrading Hemet’s storm drains.

  I waited for a reaction. There was none.

  I continued. “Beyond its questionable legality, it will cost a fortune. We’ll have to hire hundreds of more city workers to handle the load. Violators might be imprisoned.”

  Finally, Bert looked up with a straight face. “So? It’s an important project. We need it.”

  Tommy chugged a few deep breaths, recoiled, and lightly slapped his own face. “Wow. That’s a cold blast from reality.” He moved closer to me and whispered in my ear. “He’s defected to the other side.”

  Bert overheard the remark. “I have not.” He stopped writing and stared up with a scowl. “They came to me to discuss the particulars. I agree with Mayor Quinn and the others. We should start immediately.”

  “Bert, didn’t you tell me that you once met Howard Jarvis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he certainly would not approve of this—I mean if he were alive today.”

  Bert thought for a moment. “Well, sometimes even Howard Jarvis went too far. Look at it this way. All of these years, I have opposed tax increases on everything from water treatment to school bonds. But what if I was wrong? These agencies actually have a need for more funding to serve and protect the public interest. Why should a rickety old man get in the way?”

  “Shall I smack him?” Tommy asked. “Man, the dude has lost his grip on reality.”

  “Bert. What happened to you?”

  “I have been a thorn in their side for too many years. I need to let them help the multitudes of unfortunate people. Who else can do it? You should understand that; you work for the city.”

  “But taxes will skyrocket,” I tried to reason. “Someone has to pay for all of this.”

  “Let them increase taxes. Give them what they want. Let them take every dime. It is out of my hands. Nobody cares if society turns into poor and hom
eless peasants. Nobody cares.”

  “Come on, Bert,” I said. “If they get it, they will spend it. You know that.”

  “If the city took every cent we made,” Tommy replied, “it would still not be enough.”

  I turned to Tommy. “Yeah, but you hardly make anything anyway.”

  “Listen, boys,” Bert put down his pen and notebook. “I know government spending is a black hole. I’m sure you’ve heard me say that countless times. The government is like a gigantic vacuum cleaner that sucks in every penny not nailed down. So what? The predator must eat the prey. There is nothing we can do.”

  I could not believe what I had heard. How could Bert surrender? It was against his nature. He was the premier skinflint in town. “You’ve changed,” I said.

  Bert picked up his pen and started to write again, ignoring me.

  He must be getting something from the city, I said to myself. They must have paid him off—money, power, or prestige. It had to be something. Tightwads don’t come cheap. Whatever it was, it reminded me of a quote from George Bernard Shaw—“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” Bert must have befriended Paul big time.

  Tommy and I left the meeting and wondered what to do.

  “When this hits the papers tomorrow, we better keep a good eye on the exit doors.”

  “Yeah, but I can run faster than you,” Tommy joked. “I’m so much younger.”

  “Not if I tie a massive bag of French fries to your desk.”

  “Hey, that’s cheating.”

  “I know. I just hope we have somewhere to work tomorrow.” The words were light-hearted, but the meaning was dark

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, I picked up the local newspaper and prepared for some fireworks. As I walked to City Hall, my eyes focused on the front page. There was a big headline and a story about the new Mandatory Advisory Directions—MAD—with a photograph of Mayor Quinn and the other City Council members. They were smirking as if they had just stolen an important historical artifact from the Hemet Museum.