“And then what?” I asked.
“Said nonsense. They said I should go to guy who would shrink my head. You know what that means?”
I turned to Tommy. “We must do something. This is getting completely out of hand.”
“Let’s go to KGB,” Lenny proposed. “They know what to do.”
“You mean the FBI,” I corrected him.
“That’s what I said.”
I had to laugh at Lenny’s many quirks. His most annoying one was his refusal to admit any error. I wish I could figure out if it was a Lenny thing or a Russian thing.
“So, we go to FBI. Nyet?” Lenin asked.
“Maybe?” I replied. “But we have nothing to show. There is no proof of any strange or alien presence. We have no hard evidence. Just a City Hall running amuck; nothing out of the ordinary.” I paused and started to scratch my arms.
“But they’re treading on our rights,” Tommy argued. “That’s totally unacceptable.”
“You don’t understand,” I turned to Tommy. “We’re a municipality. We have strong local control. City Hall has the power to suspend the First Amendment or anything they please, at least until someone sues the City.” I had attended enough city-sponsored seminars to know how tough local ordinances could be. One speaker had told us about a case where a Denver gun nut decided to protest a city’s ordinances prohibiting concealed handguns. To prove his point, the man pulled out a handgun in front of City Hall. The police swiftly handcuffed and arrested him. During the trial, the judge explicitly disallowed any mention of the Second Amendment, ruling that it had no material effect on a local case. Tommy was incorrect—city governments had the ability to tread on long-established rights.
“We need to meet,” Lenny said. “Sooner much better.”
I suggested my place. Tommy and Lenny agreed.
“I’ll bring my combat boots and bear hat,” Lenny suggested with a sly smirk. He was obviously joking.
“This is not a war,” I insisted. “We just need to figure out what›s happening.”
“War is better.” Lenny continued with his questionable remarks. “Gets blood to boil with excitement.”
“Let’s just talk over pizza,” I said. “Nothing formal. We don’t have to take over the world quite yet.”
“I’ll bring the wheatgrass.” Tommy held up a small container of the green substance.
“I have vodka.” Lenny grinned, pulling a flask from his hip pocket.
And that was that.
Chapter 11
I was sure that our clandestine meeting was going to be anything but normal. I looked around my living room and eyed every one of our comrades. It was not a pretty sight. We had enough people to start a six-player musical band if now we only knew how to perform in harmony.
The problem was our lack of experience. None of us had training in leadership skills. Most of my co-conspirators were not just nobodies; they were on the kooky fringe. With paper and pencil in hand, I began to make a list of my team›s strong and weak points.
I examined my profile first. I saw myself as an ordinary bureaucrat who could not make definite decisions. My strength was hiding from my boss during crises, and when an unsolvable problem reared its ugly head, I was prepared to play dead like a possum. My strength was to redirect blame to others for my shortcomings. My power was to bring together a bunch of losers and make them actually think they could succeed at something.
My sidekick, Tommy, was neither dependable nor predictable, but at least intelligent and thoughtful. His mettle was not cast of solid bronze, maybe soft butter, but not hard metal. Nobody would ever commemorate his deeds as heroic; he was scared of his own thoughts. Instead, his genetic makeup matched a geeky nerd who worshipped computer games and silicon chips more than life itself. His strength was playing video games all night and ignoring his basic needs like food and bathroom breaks. He had the power of concentration.
Lenny was a spooky union official with a serious demeanor. He roamed the shadowy world of primal politics and remained distant for fear of exposing his darker side. I was afraid that he was not suitable for our group. He could be blunt but also assertive. Of course, he had strengths. His bulky and hairy Russkie body and bad attitude made him the perfect troglodyte brute. He had the power to put fear in the hearts of men.
Take Rant, for instance, and I wished someone would. Her bleak anti-social outlook of life precluded her from ever agreeing with anyone. She was terse, overconfident, and bossy. Most people avoided her, and no wonder; she usually packed heat in an obvious shoulder holster. She was our warrior princess and loony bin all rolled up in one formidable Xena. She had the power of arrogance, paranoia, and the willingness to shoot someone, hopefully not us.
On the other hand, Rudy was amiable, good-natured, and currently parked in my driveway. He added a sort of New Age pseudo-spiritualism that had more substance than Lenny could ever muster. Still, his infectious enthusiasm could bring people together despite their abnormal differences. He was popular with the younger crowd, and people naturally gathered around him like ducks swarming after moldy breadcrumbs in a murky lake. I admired his dedication to well-groomed dreadlocks. Very cool. His strengths were minor, but his power to convince people to try dangerous things was impressive.
Rudy’s on-and-off girlfriend, Candy Clarke, was a different story. I labeled her an airhead beautician with a temper. She once decked a football player with a heavy hair drier for pinching her butt. Go, girl. She definitely had the credentials for the Valley Girl of Hemet, considering that I had to explain what “meteorite” meant. Unfortunately, her moods swung back and forth to the rhythm of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I could never tell which personally she currently occupied. Her strength was unpredictability and possessed the power of creeping behind big men and whacking them with electrical gadgets.
The real reason I invited Candy was that she could not remember if she had been in Hemet during the fireball explosion. That was why I let her attend our little secret gathering. I wanted to watch her reaction and see what she would say.
Lastly, I came to Sarah. She had been a hairdresser, but now occupied a store cashier position at a grocery store. She never got involved in anything of importance. I thought about Sarah for just a nanosecond but considered the time ill-spent. She was definitely out of the picture. She had never shown any interest in political or controversial matters. She even refused to vote during elections, quibbling that to do so would make her partisan. I marked her off my list.
I stared at my list, feeling slightly queasy. I closed my eyes briefly and swallowed with some difficulty. I knew our future was not very promising. I scanned everyone in the room. They sat in a half-circle in the center of my living room. I tried to calm myself. My co-conspirators were not some revolutionary army from the jungles of Colombia; it was more like a menagerie of socially maladjusted dingbats at a Star Trek convention. But then again, prosecutors would only need to disclose the strange mental deficiencies of my accomplices to get a guilty conviction. They would be convicted in a heartbeat.
I tossed my notebook on the coffee table. I stood and decided that it was time to get the rabble roused up. My malcontents were waiting for my signal to stir up some type of action. With a heavy sigh, I walked to the center of the room and glanced at Sarah standing near the hallway entrance. She flashed a warm smile as I passed by. It seemed like she was looking at me with approving eyes.
“Thanks for coming out,” I said nervously. “I want to make it clear that we’re only here to discover what’s happening. You know, compare notes and talk things over. Nothing revolutionary, just some inquiries. That is why I asked Tommy to bring his computer. We can search for other towns that might be experiencing similar behavior.”
Tommy perched his bulky laptop on top of my coffee table, knelt, and proceeded to engage a search engine. A fast typist, Tommy moved in and out of official city websites, offbeat organizations, and news articles.
“We won’t find much of anything,
” Lenny said. “Every time I find a strange incident occurring in in other parts of the country, the data suddenly disappears.”
“So, somebody is hiding stuff?” I asked.
“Control freaks,” Rant barked out. “They conspire to control and hide everything. Knowledge is power.”
“It’s more than that,” I suggested.
“More than what?” Lenny asked with a confusing scowl.
I turned to Tommy. “Have you found anything yet?”
“Nothing,” Tommy replied without looking up, still clicking away on his laptop keyboard. “You realize that the internet has limited content. It has not been around that long.”
“Fine,” I said, “but we still need to know what is happening. And whether the fireball caused this insanity.”
“Maybe it’s not a cause, but a sign.” Rudy volunteered his New Age opinion. “There are ungodly forces at work here, and they might be warning us of future events. We could possibly be witnessing the birth of a new world, a new paradigm shift, or a distorted reality. Maybe two worlds have come together to occupy the same space. Maybe we have lost our existence.”
“That’s bullshit,” Rant suddenly exploded over Rudy’s speculation. “A is A. Nothing transcends existence. A leaf cannot freeze and burn at the same time.”
Tommy stopped typing and looked up at me. “Rudy and Rant both have taken that out of context. We are dealing with a linear system that is dedicated to secrecy and controlling the narrative. That is what the statecraft paradigm does. They believe nothing can be left to itself. They know that under fear people will demand the imposition of countless measures to solve endless problems. I mean, everybody wants a piece of control over other peoples’ lives. That’s why they need to enact controls over body and mind.”
“What bunch of musor! Nothing is wrong with controls,” Lenny ventured to make a bold statement. “Soviet Union fell because of bad leaders, not bad controls.”
Rant shot up out of her chair and stared down at Lenny. “Bad people can only make bad policies. Duh!” She snapped, “Why are we listening to his sheer nonsense?”
“Not nonsense.” Lenny sneered. “We had great country.”
“Who’s the Commie pig?” Rant wagged her finger at him with an air of mock severity.
Lenny shot up out of his chair and glared at Rant. “Who’s the anarchist whore?”
I thought World War III had just broken out in my living room.
The two locked eyes as if they were preparing to duel in a Western standoff, ready to do battle to the death. Lenny clenched his fist. Rand bit down on her bottom lip and let her fingers drift towards her gun holster.
I wedged myself between the two hotheads. “We’re not here to reenact the Cold War. Right?”
“She started it,” Lenny huffed, peppering his remarks with a few Russian expletives.
Before I could say anything, Tommy found a way to defuse the situation. He reached over and handed Rant a cold beer.
“You know,” Tommy said, “make beer suds, not war, or something like that.” He smiled profusely.
To her credit, Rant turned away and retreated to her chair, mumbling a few inaudible words.
Lenny took longer, but finally sat down, arms folded, fuming like a red-eyed bull.
“What about the new fines?” Sarah said timidly during an awkward moment of silence. “Tell them, Honey. Tell them what you heard.”
All eyes instead trained on Sarah.
“Yes, the new fines,” I said, looking somewhat warily at my wife. I had just realized that Sarah had called me “Honey.” That never happened before, at least in living memory. To her, I was just “Spencer this” or “Spencer that.” At other times, her cute nicknames for me were laced with far more descriptive nouns.
“The new fines are very stiff,” I continued until Candy interrupted me with a big gasp that jolted everyone to an upright seated position.
“What’s wrong with you people?” Candy shrieked, her hands outstretched, groping at the air. “You act like the world is ending. If someone breaks the law, of course, they must pay a hefty fine, or go to jail!”
“But what if the law is wrong?” I asked. “What if it is a bad law?”
“How can you say that?” In a burst of outrage, Candy grabbed her Reggae cap and threw it at me. She missed. “Come on!” she pleaded. “Elected officials enacted our laws. They wouldn’t mislead or abuse us. You’re just conspiracy wackos. I mean, shouldn’t we trust our politicians?!”
“Well…” I groped for an answer. I was not prepared to get into a deep philosophical debate far more suitable for a political scientist. I had no clear-cut answer to Candy’s question. I stared at Rant and waited for her to reply. She was politically adept and had a better grasp over such matters. However, it appeared she was still fuming over Lenny’s unpleasant outburst. She spurned my nudges to get her to participate. Like a stubborn mule, she refused to move on to greener pastures. I poked Tommy, hoping to get a definitive reply. That was risky. Tommy could be extremely loquacious. If someone asked him the time of day, he might feel compelled to explain how to build a clock.
“Well,” Tommy thought for a while and spoke rather elegantly. “Elected officials cannot arbitrarily make life-or-death choices for their citizens. They cannot abridge our consensual rights. Otherwise, they could lynch anybody anytime by a mere council vote. We’re more important than then a crowd-pleasing vote.”
I was amazed. Tommy actually had been concise and relevant, and did not try to explain the origins of the universe for two hours.
“You people are disloyal.” Candy grew more agitated. “You’re supposed to obey our leaders, not belittle them. Traitors!”
My head shot backward so fast from the blast that I might have suffered whiplash. So did everyone else. Nobody seemed capable of replying quickly to Candy’s accusation due to shell shock. I lead the first wave of responses. “We’re not traitors, Candy. That’s ridiculous.”
“Not from where I stand.”
“I only wanted to that talk about the fact that some laws are not soundly based.” I felt like I was tiptoeing through a virgin minefield. “Do you believe that no matter what the law says, we must obey it blindly?” I asked with an innocent face.
“Sure!” Candy retorted. “We must obey it to the letter. We are their citizens. They are our leaders. Who are you to say it should be different?”
For a moment, I pictured Candy in a stylish brown shirt, goose-stepping with thousands of soldiers in military formation. I could see her carrying a tall red banner painted with a white swastika, parading in her fashionable black jackboots. The thought sent chills down my back.
“You cannot be serious?” I said in a volume so low that I could barely hear it myself. I started to think back to my studies of history. What if a reincarnated Hitler came back from hell and took a position as our mayor, governor, or president? Would Candy parade in lockstep with him across Europe with Panzer tanks and armored personnel carriers at her side? And what about the air war? What about the invincible Luftwaffe strafing innocent civilians in bombed-out cities? I tried to stop thinking. Of course, I had watched too many classical World War II flicks, but I knew a National Socialist evildoer when I saw one. I knew my patriotic duty to help our desperate allies fight for justice, freedom, and the American way. I had to sit down before I caught myself singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Settling into my chair, I attempted to refocus everyone’s attention back to the matters at hand. I decided to delve into particulars. I dutifully noted Candy’s objections and moved on. “As I was saying, the city has decided to start fining drivers for a large sum of money after the third infraction.”
“How much? Candy asked, still smarting over our obvious traitorous ways.
“To the tune of $5,000,” I said.
“My God!” Candy’s voice burst open like an overflowing floodgate. “They cannot do that. I don’t have that kind of money to waste on a stupid traffic fine. Wh
y those greedy bastards! I hope they all rot in Hell!” With a quick motion, Candy jumped up, spat out an array of cusswords in Jamaican Creole, and ran outside.
I was stunned. “What happened?”
“Maybe she has too many overdue parking tickets,” Tommy said with a touch of humor. “You should see the penalties they charge if you forget to pay on time.”
“Funny,” Rudy said. “I have never seen her so angry.”
Candy had gone berserk over a minor incident. It made no sense.
I continued the meeting and mentioned that violations beyond the third would encompass jail time and even higher fines. No one else jumped up and screamed. I had hoped a few of them would flare with a burning sense hostility, belt out a few befitting swear words, or utter a sincere growl of injustice. If anything can pull a group or cause together, it is mutual hate for a common enemy.
“I will not pay the fine,” Sarah spoke calmly. “They have no right to punish us like that. We should vote them out of office.”
I was amazed again. Sarah had never voted in her life. Nor did she take hard-core positions or absolute stands on anything. She considered herself one of the blessed peacemakers who would use any passive means to prevent a confrontation or conflict. Now she sounded like one of the Founding Fathers after signing the Declaration of Independence—that she would give her life, honor, and fortune for the cause. Quite sexy in my opinion.
“So, are we talking about some type of Gandhi civil disobedience here?” I asked.
“Like what?” Lenny asked sarcastically. “You want stop buying salt and textiles? Like Gandhi did?”
“Spencer.” Sarah stared directly at me. “You can do something about this madness. You’re an insider.”
I leaned back. “Me? I have no special powers.”
“You’re second-in-charge of DED,” Tommy reassured me. “You could be more assertive.”
“I’ve been ignored on every occasion.” I became defensive. I felt justified in defending my inactivity. I had lodged several milquetoast protests with Big Al. Then again, every time he shot me down, I simply backed down like a spineless old whimpering dog. I was no Lassie.
We Are Them Page 11
