Electronic Gags

by Kudakwashe Muzira

  He was part of a company that was trapped behind enemy lines for two days. They couldn’t get aerial support because the burning oil fields in the terrain made visibility impossible for aircraft. Captain Phillip Cook, the commander of the company called his lieutenants to his tent for a briefing. The officers were in the captain’s tent for only two minutes when they were hit by Iraq shells. The captain and three lieutenants died on the spot, leaving Brandon Ward and an injured lieutenant. Lieutenant Brandon Ward assumed command of the company and showed bravery, tactical acumen and discipline during the two days that his company was behind enemy lines. Brandon Ward’s company managed to cut through the enemy lines, creating a corridor that the allied forces used in the final thrust of the four-day ground war. General Norman Schwarzkopf, US commander of Operation Desert Storm was so impressed with Brandon Ward’s heroics that he made him commander of the company throughout the Gulf War.

  After the war, President George Bush Senior awarded Brandon Ward with a medal of honor and promoted him to Lieutenant Colonel. Brandon should have been happy, but he wasn’t. When he came home from the war, he learnt that his cousin, Robert Ward, had died in the war. Robert had gone to the US Military Academy together with Brandon and was deployed to the Gulf a day after Brandon Ward. He was one of the war’s first US casualties. Brandon’s family didn’t tell him about his cousin’s death because they didn’t want to upset him.

  Brandon Ward was shattered. Born three days apart, Brandon and Robert Ward had been very close. They resembled each other so much that their family called them ‘the twins.’ As he grieved over the loss of his cousin, Brandon asked himself why the government had deployed them to the Gulf.

  Brandon Ward’s hatred of the US government soared when he became ill three months after his return from the Gulf. He felt tired but no matter how much he rested, his tiredness didn’t ebb away. It was like something was sucking his strength. He began to suffer from chronic headaches that were accompanied by dizziness. Then he suffered from joint pain, skin rush and indigestion. He believed that this was a result of the Gulf war. He was either a victim of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear and chemical warfare or he was suffering from inhalation of polluted air from the burning Kuwait oil fields.

  He tried to seek the help of the Defense Department’s Veterans Administration but it was to no avail. The pentagon believed that the Gulf Syndrome didn’t exist. They believed that the Gulf War veterans were trying to extort compensation from the government. Brandon suffered in silence. The politicians and the generals had used soldiers and discarded them like used condoms. Brandon watched with rage as the president and the commanders of Operation Desert Storm were hero-worshipped. The Gulf War commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, even got himself the nickname Stormin.

  The foot soldiers were ponies and like chess players who pack their chesspieces after a game, the president and his commanders forgot about the soldiers after the war. Brandon Ward’s anger kept him going. He didn’t retire from the army, believing that the best way to fight the system was from within. His hope rose when he discovered that he was not alone. There were many Gulf War veterans suffering like him and many worse than him. A big number suffered brain cancer, multiple sclerosis and loss of muscular control.

  Brandon Ward began a secret campaign to educate the war veterans about their plight. He formed a secret organization called Veterans’ Voice together with other disgruntled war veterans. The organization infiltrated all major war veterans associations in the country, recruiting Gulf war veterans.

  Ward knew he had to rise in rank in order to have more influence. He entered the Second Gulf War as a lieutenant colonel and left as a colonel. His courage and discipline during the war impressed all his immediate superiors. No one begrudged him his promotion to colonel.

  Back home, his secret organization was busy recruiting. From its onset, the Veterans’ Voice never planned to take over power. They only wanted to force the government to address their concerns. Under Brandon Ward’s command, the organization hatched a daring plan to steal hydrogen bombs from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The group wanted to use the warheads to force the government to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. The plan was to set up a launching site inside the United States and protect the site with civilian hostages. Once the site was established, the organization would then announce its demands to the government, threatening to blow up targets inside the US if the government failed to meet the demands. They managed to steal nine nuclear warheads and loaded them on a plane but they abandoned the plan when the authorities discovered the theft. The plane was found at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with three warheads missing.

  The popularity of the Veterans’ Voice among soldiers rose when it mobilized more than one hundred of its members to demonstrate against the Afghan war at a NATO summit in Chicago. The angry war veterans made headlines when they threw away their war medals in front of the bemused delegates.

  The membership of the Veterans’ Voice skyrocketed during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States was spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money every day in Afghanistan whilst the US economy was falling. Americans were disappointed to watch the government slash social programs whilst it splashed American money and American blood in foreign lands. US unemployment rate increased, tuitions rose and the number of homeless people rose.

  Colonel Brandon Ward and his organization closely monitored everything, waiting for the opportunity to strike. When the Occupy Wall Street movement started, most of Ward’s comrades in the Veterans’ Voice thought it was time to stage a mutiny but Ward stopped them. He knew the time was not yet ripe.

  When the Defense Department proposed an overhaul of the military retirement system as a measure to reduce the national debt, Brandon Ward and his comrades knew it was time to strike. The government had used them and now it wanted to take away their pensions. “If the politicians want to reduce government spending, they must withdraw our forces from abroad,” Ward told his comrades. “They cannot tinker with the century old US military pension.”

  Rage surged through the ranks of serving and retired soldiers when Congress passed the bill that slashed military pensions. Announcing the government’s decision to slash the pensions, the president urged soldiers to sacrifice for the good of the country as they did in wartime. Some war veterans tried to fight the government through the courts but Brandon Ward and his organization had other ideas.

  Their cue came when the public began demonstrations protesting the rising unemployment and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The protesters expected resistance from law-enforcement agencies as had happened during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but they were surprised to see uniformed soldiers joining the protests. The soldiers held banners demanding the withdrawal of US forces from abroad. The soldiers were so many that the military police was powerless to stop them. Emboldened by the growing number of soldiers in the protest, Brandon Ward had an interview on TV, calling on the government to stop wasting taxpayers’ money on foreign expeditions. The taxpayers were suffering economic hardships, he said, and the government had no right taking their money abroad. Brandon Ward immediately became the most popular man in the United States.

  The following day, overzealous members of Brandon Ward’s organization stormed the White House and abducted the president and his wife before abducting members of the National Security Council, Homeland Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet and Congress. It was like a scene from West Africa. The Veterans Voice asked Brandon Ward to take over the leadership of the country, which he reluctantly did. He began to enjoy the media coverage that came with his role as the man who had led a coup in the most unlikely of places.

  Surrounded by armed bodyguards, he made speeches promising to withdraw US forces from foreign lands, reverse changes in military pensions and call for elections within two years. He had a close shave with death when a sniper’s bullet grazed him. The assassination att
empt increased his popularity. He believed the sniper had come from either the CIA or the FBI. He was wrong. The sniper was a Mossad agent trying to stop the withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East.

  Brandon Ward ordered the withdrawal of US forces from abroad. All US forces immediately began to withdraw from foreign territories with the exception of the forces in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Germany. The US commanders in these countries said they didn’t recognize Brandon Ward as their commander-in-chief. However, homesick US soldiers in the three countries mutinied against the commanders, forcing the withdrawal. Brandon Ward also closed Guantanamo Bay. Growing in diplomacy, Ward said he didn’t have anything against the countries from which he had withdrawn American forces. He was doing so because the American people could no longer afford to pay for the overseas deployments.

  The Veterans’ Voices renamed itself the National Party. Following his party’s advice, Brandon Ward closed the pentagon and turned it into one of the largest shopping malls in the world. It became the most popular shopping mall in the United States. People got a kick out of shopping in the former headquarters of the world’s biggest military organization. He also turned the white house into a museum. At the White House’s gate, the National Party erected a sign that read: THIS IS THE ENTRANCE TO THE BUILDING THAT HOUSED THE MEN WHO RUINED THIS COUNTRY FOR THE SAKE OF SELF-AGRANDISEMENT. After disbanding the CIA and the FBI, Brandon Ward formed the CIB.

  European countries withdrew from NATO. The UK and France tried to use their veto power to oust the United States from the Security Council but Russia and China blocked the move, giving Brandon Ward UN veto power. In the UN General Assembly, Brandon Ward got overwhelming support from the hundred and twenty members of the Non-aligned Movement, who saw the coup as a blow to US hegemony. The non-aligned countries said Western countries had to recognize the Ward regime just as they recognized many Third World governments that had come into power by force.

  Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and Bahrain, which had enjoyed US military protection for decades, panicked and began to buy hoards of weapons from the new American regime to protect themselves against hostile neighbors. During the first year of Brandon Ward’s rule, American weapon sales multiplied by seven, bringing much needed money into the government coffers.

  To show the world that he was forging a new foreign policy, Brandon Ward invited Cuba’s President for a state visit to the United States. Sitting next to Raul Castro, President Ward officially announced the end of US sanctions against Cuba and told the world that the USA had stopped meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. The USA’s meddlesome foreign policy had given China the upper hand in the competition for Third World natural resources. The USA had lost to China in the oil sector in Angola, in the mining sector in Zimbabwe and in several other African countries because the countries preferred to do business with countries that respected their sovereignty. With Ward in power, the USA increased its investments in the Third World. The Brandon regime secured investments in Algerian natural gas, Zimbabwean diamonds, Angolan oil, Equatorial Guinean oil, Venezuelan oil, among many investments in traditionally hostile countries.

  Freed from the gigantic overseas military bill, and buoyed by the huge arms sales and new investments abroad, the US economy grew. Brandon Ward’s popularity soared among the poor and he became addicted to power. He wanted to be the world’s most powerful man for the rest of his life.

  Although the American people were happy with the economic growth, many of them, especially the middle class and the rich, didn’t like the Ward regime and said that the regime’s existence was against the American dream. They would only recognize a government that had they elected in free and fair elections. When this part of the population, which Brandon Ward called American dreamers, staged demonstrations his regime, Brandon Ward knew he had to tighten his grip on power to avoid an ‘Arab Spring.’ He banned all political activity, renamed the country and changed its currency. In face of increasing criticism from the local media, Brandon Ward closed private newspapers and private broadcasters. When cell network providers began to send anti-government messages to their clients, Brandon Ward closed all cell network companies and formed the Ten Districts Communications.

  “Darling, are you awake,” Cassandra’s voice removed Brandon Ward from his walk down the memory lane.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “What are you thinking about?” Cassandra asked, drawing close to him, hoping he would manage another erection and bone her to the Promised Land.

  “I was thinking about my past,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Kyle returned after just over an hour. After triumphantly showing Freddie and Jennifer the tickets and the program, he removed the NAST casing.

  “How much did the tickets cost?” Freddie asked.

  “Thirty lucres each.”

  “It’s cheap considering what we will gain if we accomplish our mission,” Jennifer said.

  “Sixty lucres is not a big price to pay for Ward’s head,” Freddie agreed. “The awards ceremony is starting at two o’clock, so we should be at the conference centre before half past one so that we can choose a good seat.”

  “I am a sharpshooter,” Jennifer boasted. “I can shoot Ward from anywhere in the conference centre.”

  “I know,” Freddie said. “But we must avoid being over confident. We need a seat near policemen so that when Kyle shocks them we can take their guns and shoot Ward.”

  “You must repeatedly shock the servicemen for twelve seconds at a time. If you deduct a cent from their accounts, they get a shock of about six seconds, so you must deduct two cents from their accounts. You can give them five seconds of breathing space between the shocks.”

  “Do you think twelve seconds will be enough?” Jennifer asked.

  “I’m worried that longer periods may result in ventricular fibrillation and death. The last thing we want is a massacre.”

  “Let’s increase the shock interval to eighteen seconds,” Jennifer said. “We have to make sure. There is no room for error.”

  “You are right,” Kyle said. “I vote for eighteen seconds.”

  “Okay then, eighteen seconds it is,” Freddie said, hoping they would not massacre the servicemen. “You will deduct three cents from their accounts.”

  “How will I know it’s time to shock the servicemen?” Kyle asked.

  “Good question,” Freddie said. “I will beep you on your cell phone. Right now I have no cell phone. I have to get a phone.”

  “We can borrow Aunt Melissa’s phone,” Kyle suggested. “People aren’t using phones these days. They prefer NASTs.”

  “That will do,” Freddie said. “But don’t tell her why you want the phone. We don’t want her to get hysterical.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “I’m going to Aunt Melissa’s to get you the phone,” Kyle said keenly.

  “Don’t you need a little rest?” Jennifer asked.

  “I will rest when I come back.”

  “Kyle, please don’t talk about me with mom,” Freddie cautioned.

  “We will use notes as usual,” Kyle said, taking a pen and a notebook from his desk.

  “That is the safe way… When you come back, I want us to play Super Death Race.”

  Kyle’s eyes widened. “You want to play my game?”

  “Yes. Now that we have everything we need for our plan, we have time to play Super Death Race. I can’t wait to beat you to your own game.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “We shall see.”

  Kyle put on Freddie’s NAST casing and left for his aunt’s house.

  * * * * *

  When Professor Reed arrived home, he went straight to his study, opened his laptop and played the audio files from his flash disk. None of the recordings was useful. These people either knew nothing about Freddie and Jennifer’s whereabouts or they were deliberately avoiding talking about the two fugitives. Throughout the day there ha
d been many red alerts in the NASP computer hall but none of them pointed to the fugitives.

  “Darling, dinner is ready,” Mrs Reed said, standing at the door. She never entered the study. It was forbidden territory.

  “I will come when I’m finished.”

  Mrs Reed, knowing he would not tolerate any further words, slowly walked back to the dining room.

  “Freddie Young, where are you?” Reed reflected. What could he do to catch Freddie and Jennifer? He had only one option left. He had to use NASP’s ‘wanted persons facility.’ “I will get you, Freddie and Jennifer,” Reed said, thanking his wisdom in installing the wanted persons facility in NASP. The facility involved uploading the voiceprints of a wanted person to all active electronic gags in the country. If a fugitive said a word within the range of any electronic gag, the gag would recognize the fugitive’s voice and alert the CIB. Professor Reed had been reluctant to use this facility because he knew that uploading voiceprints into all active electronic gags would overload the network. He was going to the CIB headquarters first thing in the morning to upload Freddie and Jennifer’s voiceprints into every active electronic gag in the Ten Districts of America. If the two fugitives said anything within range of an active electronic gag, the CIB would know their location.

  “Checkmate,” he said before he sprang to his feet and followed his wife to the kitchen.

  Professor Reed drove out of his house just after four in the morning. He wanted to arrive at the CIB headquarters early so that he could upload Freddie and Jennifer’s voiceprints when the NASP network and the TD Communications cell network had low traffic. An electronic gag only transmitted a signal to the network when its bearer said something or when he moved three meters. With most people in bed at this hour only a small percentage of electronic gags was transmitting and the network wasn’t busy.