Rise of the Liberators (Terrafide Book 1)

by Ryan Hyatt

  The morning of Sunday, October 16, 2022, was no different.

  “Beep…BEEP…BEEP!”

  While his head remained buried between two pillows, Chuck’s left arm flung forward, in a roundabout sort of way, barely hitting but by no means disarming the voice-controlled alarm clock blaring its wakeup call on the night stand next to him.

  “Beep…BEEP…BEEP!”

  Chuck swung again, again to no avail, but he must have grunted the right sound, because the alarm clock made an announcement, “MAY YOUR DAY BLESS YOU WITH THE FINEST FRUITS REALITY HAS TO OFFER. NO MATTER WHAT STRUGGLES YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER IN TODAY’S ACTIVITIES, REMEMEBER, MR. JOSEPH GRACIOWSKI, EVERY EXPERIENCE IS A LESSON, AND NO ACTION HAS A PURPOSE WITHOUT BELIEF. STRIVE TO REMAIN IN TUNE WITH YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES AS YOU MANIFEST AND AFFIRM LIFE’S SIMPLE TRUTH ALWAYS…METAPHYSICS IS GOD’S MUSIC.”

  At which point the smart alarm clock, which Chuck probably once convinced Joe G. to buy through one of his blog posts, began playing the 1980s popular music hit, “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” by Yes. Perhaps the song was manifest as an ode to both men’s predicament, for Chuck was a divorcé lying alone in Joe G.’s bed, and neither his friend who owned the bed, nor his wife who shared it with him, were present. Suddenly, it seemed to Chuck everyone he loved was missing from his life.

  Chuck gazed out from his pillow sandwich, bewildered by this strange song and its truth that rang in his ears. At the age of forty-eight, he was often on the road waking in beds that weren’t his. As time passed with no end to his restless wandering, he couldn’t help but wonder what was stranger: him, or his circumstances?

  It would be nice to wake in his own bed for once, Chuck thought, tucked away in Jerome, Arizona, a town where he at least had a home, just no job there to pay for it. Chuck looked forward to a day where he could work where he lived. In the past, many years ago, that had been the case. Meanwhile, in the present, the morning sun reflected through Joe G.’s cracked blinds into Chuck’s half-opened eyes, and Chuck wasn’t fooled by the blissful brilliance. It sure didn’t beat an Arizona sunrise. Chuck glanced away, and his burning retinas followed his gaze until the purple dots he saw rested close to a series of photographs located on a shelf across his splayed body.

  There were four pictures of Joe G. side by side. The first photo on the left depicted the media mogul standing on the Golden Gate Bridge, wearing what appeared to be a cellophane suit and helmet. Chuck thought it was likely cosplay for some dramatic sci-fi event or product his buddy endorsed at the time, but as he gazed across at the other photos, he realized it was a spacesuit. The second photo depicted his buddy entering a smooth, cone-like capsule with a long pointy nose, the vehicle in which he conducted his apparent space mission. In the third photo, the space capsule parachuted to a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean. In the fourth and final photo, Joe G. emerged, the capsule hatch and his mouth agape, muttering something to a crowd of reporters standing on a nearby boat, mikes in hand, pointing at the astronaut safely returned to Earth.

  A caption inscribed at the bottom of the picture said, “I MEAN NEITHER MYSELF NOR YOUR PLANET ANY HARM.”

  Chuck chuckled. That was pretty much the story of Joe G.’s life. No harm was ever intended by his brazen actions; it was just sometimes the result. Chuck, slowly aroused from his stupor, recalled the story that accompanied the photos. Joe G. performed the ludicrous stunt as part of an extreme sporting commercial shot, the beginning of his meteoric rise to fame, or infamy, some might say.

  Chuck decided it was time for a little bravery of his own. He took a deep breath, removed the pillows from his head and sat upright. He was in Joe G.’s master bedroom, all right, located in his and Siza’s house on Nob Hill. As far as where the troubled lovebirds were, Chuck had no idea. His eyes traced the hardwood floors to the French doors leading out of the bedroom, shut and sealed.

  The physical privacy gave Chuck the illusion he could think without being interrupted, so he stayed put and contemplated the situation. The rest of the room’s décor consisted of posters of classic Rock ‘n’ Roll bands, a strewn guitar, drums and keyboard, dangling beads, Buddha statues, cameras pointed at him on the bed, an erect shotgun that had flowers poking out from the barrel, as well as incense burners and other scary and enlightening stuff the crazy Polack and his Brazilian sweetheart felt compelled to keep close to them.

  On a bookshelf Chuck spotted Charles the Chicken Crosses the Road. More than a decade since publication, it was always pleasant, and sad, to find his first and only children’s book collecting dust in other people’s homes. Chuck recalled how Joe G. struck him as an impostor when they met at a San Francisco signing shortly after the tale’s release. With his toothy grin and Charlie Chaplin mustache, Joe G. introduced himself as a collector of Americana, and he insisted on buying Chuck a drink when he finished his autographs.

  Chuck agreed, and through the course of their outing, Joe G. revealed himself to be a bumbling transplant far from his hometown of Chicago and trying to make a name for himself out West. He never stayed on topic, or more precisely, he had a tendency to join topics in ways that were oddly remarkable, just another man with big ideas and little means. By the end of their first encounter, Joe G. claimed to have lost his credit card, so Chuck had to pay their bill. How such a man ascended to become an entertainment powerhouse was a testament to the remarkableness of the California economy, in which no dream was too huge or too small to warrant an audience, perhaps, but such miracles alone were no longer reason for Chuck to remain tied to the most troublesome pals of his past.

  Money, however, was a tether that even the sometimes aloof Charles Shaw could not deny. Scratching his head on Joe G.’s king-sized, heart-shaped, down-feathered, love-nest mattress, Chuck wondered what offer his old friend must have made to entice him back to San Francisco, or what some of the locals referred to as ‘The City,’ as if none of the others mattered.

  In other words, Chuck couldn’t remember what lured him into Joe G.’s bed. He only felt a slight wooziness in his head. Chuck did know that The City’s residents generally wore cleaner-fitting clothes and tighter hairdos than their counterparts south in Los Angeles, but Chuck thought they were crazier for trying to maintain a professional appearance. At least the City of Angels was a city of sinners and everyone visiting there quickly learned the irony of the name by being betrayed, robbed or swindled, and then enjoyed a decent laugh along with whatever sorrows came their way. The residents of The City, on the other hand, by pretending theirs was a classy place and dressing the part, were as much to blame for projecting a false image of their hometown and themselves. Although The City was cleaner, smarter and arguably better in many ways than L.A., it wasn’t so worthy as to monopolize the name ‘city,’ especially since it was as common to be betrayed, robbed or swindled in San Francisco as it was anywhere else. Jerks were jerks wherever they lurked, Chuck thought, and the worst were those who thought they weren’t.

  None of these hung-over cross-cultural comparisons explained what Chuck was doing in another couple’s bed, and maybe his insights were irrelevant, because people in California, politically speaking, all were of the same ilk anyway. Liberals, at least in name, and some more in substance than others. Chuck flipped open the laptop next to him and found in big bold headlines more news about West Coast nationalists hoping to rip the Golden State from North America and drag anyone hanging by their roots with them. Scratching his testicles, he perused the story.

  In a recent survey, thirty percent of Californians identified themselves as “American.” Another twenty percent identified themselves as “Hispanic, Non-American,” while the majority of those polled – fifty percent – identified themselves as “American, but better.”

  What did it mean to be better than American, Chuck thought? As far as nationalities were concerned, he remembered pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes as a boy in school, raised to believe that being American was the best.

  However, everywhere on the West Coas
t it seemed, talk was rampant of failed American economic and environmental policies. Californians blamed an inept federal government and inane American culture for thwarting their reforms and ambitious plans for sustainable development in the twenty-first century. They thought they could achieve better results acting on their own without interference from Washington. The Eco-Socialists were notorious for fomenting this discontent. Chuck knew what Joe G. and his organizer friends wanted most for California in coming years: a calamity mismanaged by Washington to spur the state’s revolt from the Union.

  Chuck closed the laptop, feeling nostalgic. He missed the good old days when a Republican was a Republican, not a federalist trying to preserve the nation, and a Democrat was a Democrat, not a revolutionary trying to tear it apart. Chuck stood and proceeded to walked around in his boxers, his bare feet stumbling on the hardwood floor, searching for the rest of his clothes and any further clues as to what he was doing in Joe G.’s bedroom.

  Maybe Chuck drank too much the night before, he thought, and that’s why it was taking longer than usual for him to come to his senses. Usually the exhilaration of waking where he didn’t belong already would have worn off, and he’d have realized the specifics of any bizarre work-related mission he was on.

  Instead of his clothes, Chuck found lying on the ground a copy of Tierra Firma, by Taylor W., another old chum with a long Polish last name. The book was an unusual success in an age when most fared poorly, a problem in publishing with which Chuck was only all-too familiar. Tierra Firma was lauded as the blueprint for Eco-Socialism and the groundwork for California’s secession movement. For some reason, the manifesto touched a nerve with many, even those residing outside the Golden State, for it quickly climbed to the top of the Best Seller List and has maintained a vantage point there ever since.

  Chuck picked up the copy and turned to the back cover. Taylor W. was grinning in his usual cockeyed way. He wasn’t bald like Chuck, and he wore shiny futuristic sunglasses in the photo.

  Chuck was still amazed at the craze the high school biology teacher caused. Who wouldn’t be? Tierra Firma was more successful than anything Chuck and other scribes penned. Taylor W.’s publisher sold millions of copies of the book, mostly in digital format, and sent him on a national publicity tour, including pit stops on Telenet and radio shows. Taylor W. traded up his high school teaching job for a professorship at Berkeley, where Chuck thought it unlikely that he had trouble getting dates, and served as an intellectual pontificator ever since.

  On the other hand, Chuck’s career over the past decade took a strange turn from promising children’s book author to traveling gizmo hawker. For him, the switch from tale-teller to gadget salesman was a big disappointment, so fond was he of inspiring kids with the written word. Others, like his ex-wife, saw it as a big improvement. To them the written word, especially Chuck’s, was a lost cause and waste of time.

  The odd combination of complacency and pragmatism Chuck encountered in his ex-wife and others wasn’t limited to the realm of reading, but had become standard operating procedure in almost every aspect of everyday life. People only half-paid attention to what they did anymore, Chuck noticed, despite how much survival still required concentration. Because of the endless stream of advertisements that found their way into people’s minds, people believed they needed body-sculpting brassieres and underwear that made them look sleeker and sexier than they really were. People had become fanatics for spray cans filled with genetically-modified fumes which, when sniffed, kept them up for hours browsing deals and gossip on the Telenet while their alarm clocks chimed in with uplifting esoteric messages. Nowadays people shopped without leaving their homes, and on those occasions they decided to bear the burden of the sun and the great outdoors, maybe to escape the doldrums of their lives for more doldrums at work, they needed car keys that jingled and yelled back at them so they could always be found and earphones that provided them with constant social media updates that buzzed in their brains as they drove to and from jobs, bars and restaurants, their minds always preoccupied and awash by whatever fleeting trend or buzzword they found so important to be attuned.

  Chuck often confessed to his friends when he was drunk on the cheap wine he loved that few products exhibited at the conventions he attended were genuinely useful, while many of them were novelties, and most of it was just plain junk. According to Chuck, there were people in parts of the world, say, tribal Africa, who had genuine needs such as food, clean water, access to Band-Aids. Americans, however, mostly had wants. In a consumer culture, it was difficult for some to understand the difference, and technological advances, such as those Chuck promoted, only blurred the line. A want easily became a need as soon as everyone else had it; otherwise, how might you function without it? Such was a great irony of the Greatest Depression. For without the latest gizmos, which sometimes cost money, people found themselves joining that teaming mass of those out of the loop, out of luck and out of work.

  Chuck, of course, learned this lesson the hard way. The publishing industry began to flounder the first decade of the twenty-first century as people who might have read in previous generations continued turning to less mind-utilizing mediums for information and entertainment. Thus Chuck, coming of age in an industry when it was at its worst, found himself in the awkward position of changing careers as a grown man to keep up with the changing times in which he lived. His literary agent offered Chuck a job working for one of the well-financed multimedia sites, writing reviews of the countless new products entering the marketplace, which Chuck, slipping in kiddy book sales and his mortgage, accepted during the 2008 economic downturn.

  The upside to Chuck’s career change quickly became evident in his paycheck, and for his daughter’s sake, he never looked back. Chuck felt he had to go where the money was, and the money just happened to take him to tech conferences, trade expos and business trips always farther and farther from her. Sometimes on the road Chuck ran into the Taylor W.s of the world, men who managed to sell their own words for a living, and it left him feeling bitter. However, Chuck was also fed, clothed and housed, because after over a decade working in such a capacity, he was on track to eventually retire from peddling products the public needed little convincing that it needed to have.

  Having penned his share of fairy tales, however, Chuck knew everything sounded better in writing, and he doubted the architects of tomorrow, people like Joe G. or Taylor W., knew what they were talking about half the time when they spoke of their utopian schemes. They were as lost and bewildered by the modern world as Chuck was. However, Chuck promised to bear their pseudo-intellectual banter whenever he was around them, as long as what was promised him was delivered: money.

  Dropping Terra Firma back on the ground, Chuck realized at last his purpose in returning to The City. On Monday he was scheduled to speak at the Exponential, a popular tech expo, and he was assured by Joe G. this engagement would earn him enough dough to take a break from the cocktail circuit/electronic circus for a while, so he could spend winter by his daughter’s side in Jerome and get back to the kind of writing he enjoyed.

  At least, Chuck believed that was his old friend’s offer until the French doors swung open and Joe G. appeared with his Charlie Chaplin mustache, naked except for the Viking helmet on his head, waving a battle ax. Joe G. was bopping to a queer beat thumping loudly from down the hall as he screamed the song’s chorus line over and over again…“DAMN IT IN THE DISCO, WHERE’D THAT BITCH GO?!”

  CHAPTER 2

  “What bitch?” Chuck said. “You mean your wife?”

  Joe G. glanced around the room, barked an order, and suddenly the music stopped. He lowered his battle ax. He looked dejected.

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  “You mean she’s gone as in she went out to grab a cup of coffee, or she’s gone as in she never wants to speak to you again?”

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  Chuck walked to the corner of the bedroom, hands on his head. Like so much o
f what Joe G. said, he wasn’t sure if it was to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, his host began fiddling with the cameras, and that’s when Chuck noticed they were recording.

  “What happened last night?” Chuck said.

  “Siza was cheating on me with you,” Joe G. said. “The truth of her betrayal must have upset her, I guess, so she split.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Your wife never cheated with me, I never touched her!”

  “Then what did you do?”

  Chuck shrugged. He couldn’t remember. He must have had a lot of wine after all. He just wanted into crawl into bed, his own bed, in Jerome, and when he woke have tea with his daughter.

  Joe G. grabbed a thumb drive from a camera on the headboard and waved it in the air victoriously.

  “This ought to do,” he said, and he dragged Chuck by the hand out of his bedroom along the Victorian-style hallway, past the stairwell into the studio.

  This was the heart and mind of Unitus Productions. A giant tri-screen linked to the Telenet dropped from the center of the ceiling, suspended over a round oversized oak table filled with electronic equipment, which functioned as Joe G.’s desk. The screens could be viewed from the bar, chaise lounge, couches and recliners that also furnished the room. Several pills littered the floor. Joe G. took a seat at the table and popped the drive into a computer.

  “I’ve been suspecting Siza of infidelity for a long time,” he said without looking at Chuck. “Now I have the proof. She’s not getting a damn thing in the divorce, either, not even the dog! She can walk back to Brazil, for all I care!”

  Joe G. uttered a command, and the shuttered windows opened. The sky outside was ominous. From the east, Chuck noticed the sun barely poking through the clouds. From the west, he saw fog rolling in from the Pacific.

  “What a nightmare,” Chuck said as he spotted the prescription bottle on the desk, the source of all this mischief, he guessed. “I’m not sure I want to know what happened last night, after all.”