2043 A.D.

by Edward M Wolfe

  “Because of our great successes in every sector of society that we’ve applied new solutions to with new and existing technologies and devoting our energies and our resources to advancements, we’ve succeeded in becoming the most advanced territory in the entire country.”

  This time he couldn’t hold them back. The audience cheered again with wild abandon, celebrating their leader and themselves. Giving in to their overwhelming celebratory spirit, Phan and Steven danced for a moment as colored lights spontaneously swirled around them.

  Phan returned to the podium and the crowd quieted, perhaps realizing that they still hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

  “Our success and leadership has not gone unnoticed. Our wealth has slowly but surely spread to other counties and states. And they always ask how we’re doing it, and I always tell them. Recently however, another question has been asked by the acting heads of communities who have also attempted to rebuild themselves since the Wars.”

  He paused and looked out at the audience, trying to make eye contact with as many as he could. He looked down at his feet and took a deep breath.

  “Seventeen former American territories have asked us to accept the position and responsibility of leading them into the future with our local form of governance, and have unanimously signed their allegiance to my administration and Orange County as the governing seat of the newly formed Equal States of America!”

  Fireworks blasted into the sky. The band played a rockin’ number. A new but familiar looking flag lit up on all of the jumbo monitors. Black, white, and blue balloons that matched the colors in the flag were dropped by drones carrying massive lightweight sacks over the crowd. The people cheered. Some of them cried. Children caught the balloons and threw them back up into the air.

  Although no one could hear him, Phan wiped a tear from his eye and spoke into his microphone.

  “Welcome to the E.S.A. Let the party begin!”

  Thirty-six

  Charlie made his way to the government facility using a beaten and weathered Thomas Guide. Most of the street names hadn’t changed and he had no trouble locating the place. The long parking lot was lined with a single row of spaces and he was a little surprised there weren’t more cars there. The sun was going down and they’d be well into second shift now, but surely they’d need almost as many people at night as they did in the day.

  He sat in his car for a moment before heading to the entrance of the large building. Anxiety struck him as he suddenly remembered that he still had his shotgun in the back of the car. He reached behind him and lowered it to the floor. That was the best he could do. It was still wrapped in the small blanket so it wasn't blatantly obvious what it was, but he wished he had something else to place over it to obscure the shape. He kept the interior of his old car spotless though so there was nothing in it he could use.

  He assured himself that no one would be looking into his vehicle closely enough to even get suspicious, and besides, it was dark, so even someone walking by and glancing in probably wouldn't notice it. Now that he'd addressed that concern, he thought of the demand he was about to make to see his grandson. He took a few deep breaths and exited the vehicle.

  He walked alongside a perfectly manicured row of bushes with ground lights every fifteen feet. The night air smelled pleasant. Despite being in a parking area the length and width of a regular street with cinderblock wall on his left, he could smell the scent of some type of flower which brought back pleasant memories. He couldn't recall anything specific about the memory; just a sense of some time in the past in which he'd been enjoying himself and had smelled this same fragrance.

  Charlie approached the double-set of glass doors at the entrance. He thought for just a second of turning around and coming back some other time. He recognized this impulse as being one of irrational fear and he suppressed it, determined to carry out his intentions. He pulled the door open and walked forward with confidence and bravado like the young soldier he had once been long ago.

  He approached a semi-circular front desk in the middle of the large lobby that was adorned with small palms on a reflective marble floor. He was slightly disturbed to see that the man behind the desk looked more like a police officer than a receptionist, which he'd been expecting.

  "Can I help you, sir?" the guard asked, after watching Charlie cross the lobby.

  "Yes, you can. I'd like to have a visit with my grandson, Deron Young, who I understand is receiving some type of treatment here."

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible, sir."

  "I'm certain that it's entirely possible. You simply bring him to a room and take me to that same room. Nothing impossible about it."

  "Sir, we’ve only just begun the program here and a visiting schedule has yet to be established. If you'll leave your contact information, someone will contact you once visiting days and hours have been worked out."

  "Bureaucratic oversight in failing to realize that people would wish to spend time with their loved ones is not going to prevent me from seeing him. I'm standing here now, and my grandson is here now. Protocol be damned. As a citizen whose taxes contribute to your salary as well as the operation of this facility, I insist on seeing my grandson. "

  “Not that it makes a difference, but there haven’t been taxes since before the war. But regardless, a visit cannot happen at this time.”

  “If you lack the ability to make that happen, get me one of your superiors who can.”

  Charlie watched gears turning in the guard's head. He could see that Charlie was not a complacent citizen who would be turned away simply because someone in "authority" denied him what he wanted. The guard clenched his teeth and started to slide back in his chair, about to get up when his phone rang simultaneous with a flashing red light on his desk. Charlie's peripheral vision picked up other flashing lights. He looked around the lobby and saw flashing red lights above many doors, including those at the entrance.

  The guard hit a button on his phone console and listened to a voice in his ear. "Yes, sir!" he said. He stood up and approached Charlie. "We have a situation that demands my attention. You need to leave now, sir. I'm escorting you to the exit." He reached for Charlie's arm. Charlie stepped backwards, turning to avoid the guard's grasp.

  "Don't you put your hands on me. I'm quite capable of making it to the exit unaided." He walked toward the door, then tried to open it but it couldn’t. The guard stepped around him and unlocked the door.

  "I'll be back. And I won’t stop coming back until I see my grandson," Charlie declared as he went through the door.

  "You’ll be wasting your time. Deron Young isn’t even here anymore," the guard said somewhat mysteriously, shutting the door and manually locking it.

  ***

  When Drake awoke, he was angry and sexually frustrated. He felt as though he'd been robbed. He should've been enjoying the afterglow of a sexual experience, and yet he'd not only been denied that gratification, he'd been assaulted as well.

  He went to the living room, sat on the couch, and fumed as he chain-smoked. It would be impossible to go after the prostitute since there was a record of his transaction with her. Revenge was not an option. But Drake was determined that someone should pay for what she'd done to him. The theft of his ABT funds, the humiliation, and the assault with her taser, all ate away at him as he thought about what to do.

  Since he had not enjoyed the experience with the prostitute even before things turned disastrous, Drake's mind returned to the last thing that had really fueled his desire. He thought of his last cable install customer. He would love to pay a visit to Mitzi, but he realized a few reasons why that would be a bad idea, the main one being that she was a customer of his employer.

  Next, he thought of the two coeds he'd watched the night before. Thoughts of them resonated with his current anger and frustration. He had also been denied any satisfaction with them. He decided that was where he'd go. In addition to still needing to get something out of his time and effort invested
at their residence, the setup outside their house was fairly ideal.

  Later, after the short drive, Drake stood outside the house, looking in the same window he'd looked through on his first visit. Both girls were home and moving around various parts of the house. He'd seen one of them when she came into the bedroom for a few minutes, but to his disappointment, she hadn't come in to change clothes or bathe. He was furious when the young woman left the room so soon after entering it. He silently cursed her and willed her to return and at least change clothes. When she had come into the room, his anticipation alone excited him far more than the naked blonde prostitute had. He didn't understand how that was possible, but he also didn't give it any thought beyond noticing it.

  Once again, Drake felt a combination of anger and lust as he stood between the two houses, desperate for one of the young women to reveal herself to him. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to restrain himself if he got what he wanted. He was so angry, he felt like adrenaline was pumping through his veins laced with testosterone. These bitches need to be taught a lesson, he mentally repeated to himself, over and over.

  As he stood there fantasizing about what he'd like to do to either of the college girls, and surprisingly, even to the prostitute from earlier, he was startled by the bedroom light switching on. He quickly ducked, controlled his excited breathing, then slowly raised his head just high enough to see the girl who had come into the room. He could barely contain his excitement when he saw her cross her arms, grab the bottom of her tee shirt and lift it up over her head and then toss it toward a clothes hamper by the closet. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  He fondled himself briskly as he watched her walk over to her vanity mirror and brush her hair, change her earrings, then spritz herself with perfume. Then she went to her closet and after looking over several options, she selected a bright yellow top with spaghetti straps. She slipped it on, checked herself in the mirror one more time then left the room. And that was it. The house computer detected her departure from the bedroom and her subsequent departure from the house and it turned off her bedroom light. Drake wanted to punch the wall below her window. He wanted to punch it and punch it until all of his energy was expended.

  He heard the car drive away and he also heard music playing somewhere inside. The other girl had stayed. That meant the night wasn't quite over yet. But he'd need to find another window now.

  He started to move forward to go around the house to the other side when he saw someone walking down the sidewalk. He ducked back into the dark corner between the two houses and held still. Waiting. He was always waiting.

  Thirty-seven

  Charlie walked to his car, wondering the whole way what the guard had meant by the last thing he'd said. He would've sat and pondered it for a few minutes, but whatever was going on inside had put the facility on some kind of lockdown. A security vehicle raced past him and he decided he'd better get away quickly before someone decided to question him and look inside his car.

  He didn't know if Kathleen had lied to him about Deron being here, or if they'd transferred him to another location, or if maybe, considering the silent alarms and the sudden activity around the premises, Deron had escaped. He smiled as he drove away, hoping that's what had happened. It just might be that he'd taught his grandson well.

  He drove to Kathleen's house to tell her what had happened with his attempt to visit Deron. But he found her house empty. Apparently she had decided to go out after all. He wasn’t going to leave until after he’d spoken to her so he went inside and sat on the couch.

  He brooded about her being out playing around while he was seemingly the only one concerned about Deron. The thought of losing Deron terrified him, especially after having just lost Feenix. Recent loss along with the fear of new loss put Charlie’s mind into a morose state and suddenly he found himself thinking about Elizabeth and his last day with her.

  26 Years Earlier

  It was Kathleen’s 7th birthday and Elizabeth wanted to do something special for her despite the turmoil, chaos, and violence rampaging through the city. A birthday party was not possible, and she had no ingredients for a cake, but she at least wanted to give her little girl a gift of some kind.

  Charlie argued against it of course. Most businesses were closed, and those that remained open could only do so by employing many heavily armed guards to keep their stores from being looted and set on fire. With the high price of the guards, the cost of goods shot up. There was nothing they could afford to buy even if they were able to reach the store safely.

  Once a week, a FEMA truck pulling a tractor trailer stationed itself at the corner of their street. National Guard troops stood guard while law-abiding citizens waited in line to collect a week’s worth of basic food items. Even with the guards in place, it was a frightening and dangerous routine. Most of Charlie’s and Elizabeth’s neighbors were white and so their neighborhood was subject to frequent attacks, especially on the food distribution day. Food was not distributed to the lawless areas where armed and masked citizens ruled the streets and drove the law-abiding citizens away to other cities and FEMA refugee camps.

  A delivery was expected on this day, but there would be nothing special in the food rations that could be used for a birthday celebration so Elizabeth got an idea. She wanted to go to a friend’s house, two blocks over and ask if her friend had some flour and perhaps an egg. If she could make Kathleen a pancake it would at least be a cake of sorts.

  Charlie said it was too dangerous. Especially on food day. Every week the lawless groups from the inner cities had gotten larger and tried harder to overcome the troops guarding the food trucks. You didn’t need a clock to know when it was time to line up for food. You just had to wait for the gunfire to come to an end.

  Elizabeth conceded that Charlie was right, but then when he went into Kathleen’s room to play with her, she silently snuck out the door hoping to make it to Evelyn’s house and back before Charlie noticed her absence. Her timing couldn’t have been worse.

  She had barely made it outside before the initial National Guard troops began to arrive, and as soon as they did, revolutionaries who had taken up positions between houses the night before attempted a surprise attack. As was usually the case, they were easily defeated, but it took time to ensure they’d gotten all of them and none were left hiding in bushes or under cars.

  Kathleen wanted Elizabeth to join their tea party so Charlie called out to her. When she didn’t respond, he went to the kitchen to get her. When found she wasn’t there he quickly checked the rest of the house and panicked when he couldn’t find her. He went outside and didn’t see her anywhere. He only saw troopers checking the street for hidden raiders.

  Charlie heard a shot to his left. He turned and saw a man with a bandanna covering his face fall to the ground several houses away. Then at the house just before that one, he saw a flash of blue as Elizabeth came running out from between two houses waving her arms. More shots rang out and she fell face down on the lawn beside a dead rose garden.

  Charlie collapsed where he stood. As he went into shock at the loss of the love of his life, he asked why. Why would they shoot a white woman wearing a blue dress? She was unarmed and looked nothing at all like the gangsters from the inner cities they had just been fighting.

  Charlie was startled when he heard the front door opening. It took him a few seconds to get his mind firmly back in present time and to push away the grief that always threatened to overcome him when he thought about Elizabeth’s senseless death.

  "Dad? What are you doing here?"

  “I went to see Deron but he wasn’t there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kathleen was a little tipsy from the drinks she’d had, but her mind was starting to clear up. She put her purse and communicator on the coffee table and sat down next to her father.

  "Kathleen, I want you to answer me and be completely honest.” He spoke softly, with the memory of her as a little girl fresh in his mind. “Did you give me the correct
address for where Deron is supposed to be?"

  "Of course I did. What do you mean 'supposed to be'?"

  "He wasn't there."

  "He has to be there," she said, fighting the alcohol in her blood for control of her mind. "What makes you think he wasn’t?"

  "A security guard told me he wasn't there. They also had some situation that cut my attempted visit short, with red lights flashing all over the place and security vehicles racing around the property like maniacs. I'm entertaining the possibility that Deron may have escaped." Charlie smiled.

  "Oh, no," Kathleen exclaimed.

  "Oh, yes," Charlie countered. "And if you think there's something wrong with him, he's more than welcome to live with me. I happen to like him just the way he is."

  "You don't understand." Kathleen got up from the couch and started walking toward the dining room, then abruptly turned back toward the living room, and thus she began pacing.

  "What don't I understand?" Charlie began to feel the first glimmer of something new that wasn't quite right and he feared what he was about to hear. "What's going on?"

  She stopped pacing long enough to give Charlie a worried look, then resumed. With her back to Charlie, she walked to where the living room carpet met the linoleum of the dining room and stopped.

  "I'm afraid I didn't tell you as much as I could have about the reason Deron was selected for this therapy." She stood still, afraid to turn around and face the wrath she expected.

  "I'm listening," he said, calmly.

  She turned around and walked back to the couch, sat down and with her elbows on her knees put her face down in her palms. She exhaled a long, shaky breath into her hands, then lifted her head and bravely made eye contact with Charlie.

  "If Deron ran away, and if he broke any laws while doing so, this could be bad. They were afraid that without intervention, Deron would turn into a criminal. And this... therapy program was meant to stop that from happening. It wasn't just a social skills thing like I told you it was." She braced herself for his response.