“Keep talking, Eyre. No one cares about your opinions, and to be honest I don’t think you do either. You just want to sound smart and scary; you sound neither.”
Eyre shook his head. “You’re blind, man, you’re just how they want you to be. A compliant consumer, soaking up the government streams, doing what you’re told and thinking what you’re told. Keep on sleepwalking, brother. I’m awake.”
Adam felt calmer than he might have expected. That Eyre had remained relatively sanguine helped, but it was the strength of his convictions that was sustaining him. “Okay. So you’re the only one that didn’t drink the Kool Aid. You’re the only person who can see through the propaganda. How clever you must be. How insightful you must be. Congratulations.”
“I don’t care what you think, Wilson. All I know is when they come for me I won’t be going without a struggle.”
“They’re not coming for you. They don’t even know who you are, or care.”
Eyre paused in thought. “You don’t have to agree with me, but think about this. Our president was elected thirteen years ago. There have been no presidential elections since. He’s the longest serving president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in the twentieth century, and there’s no sign that he’s going to step down or call an election anytime soon . Think about the financial system. Where’s that headed? The energy crisis has caused massive damage to the economy. Unemployment is the highest it’s been this century. The national debt is growing at an unprecedented rate. Cortes’ approval ratings are dropping rapidly. What’s the president doing about it? Not much, as far as we know. He’s not engaging with the Martians, so none of these problems are going away anytime soon. With no means of democratic expression what’s the public doing? Protesting, as is their right. What’s happening to the protesters? Arrested. Beaten up. Shot.”
Adam was shaking his head.
“Where’s all this going? It’s not getting any better, is it? The police and military are being used to prop up an illegitimate government that’s rapidly losing favour. If you’ve ever read any history books you’ll know that this has happened before, again and again and again. And everywhere it happened they said, ‘it couldn’t happen here.’ Well, it is happening here, now.”
Adam got up to leave. He smiled a tight, unconvincing smile at Eyre and said, with all the sarcasm he could muster, “Viva la revolución.”
“God bless the president,” Eyre bitterly replied.
Alice Embry had long loose ginger curls. She was confident but quiet and although Adam Wilson had noticed her in his engineering class before he had never spoken to her. He was surprised to find her hanging back when the lesson ended. It was a scenario that he might imagine in some idle daydream but to find it actually happening was a little disorienting. As he gathered his books he could see her hanging around the door, occasionally glancing his way.
“Hi,” said Alice as Adam approached.
“Hi,” he replied, unsure of quite what was happening. Alice turned and walked with him as they left the classroom.
“I’m sorry about Leon,” she said, “that’s just what he’s like. You’re right, he likes the sound of his own voice.”
Adam was relieved that Alice was being friendly. He hadn’t been sure what to expect. Perhaps she was going to continue Eyre’s hectoring rant but it seemed like she was aware of his foibles. “It’s okay,” said Adam, acutely alert to how limp he sounded. Alice smiled at him but he was looking down at his feet as they walked.
“He drives me crazy too. He never stops with all of that stuff.”
Adam nodded.
“But you know, there is something to it.”
For the first time Adam glanced up at her.
“Oh, I know, it sounds crazy. Listen, I’m not as bad as he is, and I know he goes way over the top with it all but, as annoying as it is to admit it, I think he’s right about some of those things.”
Adam thought before answering. “He was at my junior school. He’s always been a gobshite. I try not to listen to stuff like that.”
“I know. It’s just . . . he’s not like that all the time. He’s a pretty good guy, actually. All I’m saying is there is something to it.”
“Something to what?”
“The stuff he says. I know he goes over the top and he sounds paranoid and he overdoes it, but there is some truth in what he says.”
Adam stopped. He looked at Alice and felt awkward. Her face was bright and clean and her skin was clear. She was waiting for him to speak and she looked genuinely engaged and interested in what he might be about to say. “I really don’t think anyone gives much of a shit about what college kids chat about. College kids might think their opinions are important - no one else does.”
Alice gave the slightest of frowns. “I know it sounds crazy but you should think about it. That’s all I’m asking. Think about what he said.”
Adam felt conflicted. He was pleased that an attractive woman was taking the time to talk to him but irritated by the fact that she seemed to be talking pure nonsense. The rational side of his brain had the upper hand and he found himself saying, “I do think about that stuff. That’s what makes it so infuriating when people like him make out the rest of us are just drones, soaking up government propaganda. I’m a rational human being, I seek out information and reach informed opinions. At the end of that process I’ve decided I support our president. Just because I don’t shout it from the refectory roof doesn’t mean my views are any less well informed or valid than Leon’s. Your boyfriend loves an audience because it makes him feel good. He’s still talking shit.” They started walking again.
“If you’d said that to me three months ago I would’ve totally agreed with you. But some things have happened to me, Leon and our friends recently and ‑”
“What things?”
“Just stuff. Cops knowing stuff they shouldn’t know. Private stuff we’ve streamed to each other, that sort of thing.”
Adam grunted.
“And over the last few weeks we’ve been ‘randomly,’” she made the air quotes, “stopped and questioned dozens of times. We were stopped four times one evening last week. Four times.”
Adam mulled over what Alice was saying. He never took anything at face value and assumed there must be a rational explanation. They were teenagers and he was aware that teenagers love to exaggerate and make connections where there are none. He doubted the police had stopped them as many times as she said and thought that if they were stopped it would probably have been for some justifiable reason. Alice seemed as lovely as she looked but hanging round Eyre had maybe driven her as paranoid as he was.
They reached their next classroom.
“It’s been nice talking to you, Alice. Give my regards to the little revolutionary.”
Alice looked saddened at his remark and the sadness saddened him. “I’m sorry” he said, “I just can’t take him seriously.”
“It’s okay,” said Alice. “I didn’t believe it either, to start with. Why don’t you come to one of our meetings?”
“Meetings?” Adam tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “Like I said before, I support the president. I’ll pass.”
Alice shrugged wistfully. She knew she hadn’t convinced him even a little bit but at least, she thought, she may have planted a seed. “Well, if you just want to hang out that would be okay too.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Adam said goodbye and entered the classroom, wondering what had just happened. He had never been approached by a girl at college before. Did Leon Eyre use his attractive girlfriend to lure people into his personality cult? Unlikely, thought Adam. Though Eyre had a certain offbeat appeal he was far from being a cult leader. Perhaps Alice was just friendly. She was certainly charming.
Maybe he would hang out with them.
For a loudmouth, Leon Eyre turned out to be quite personable. Alice Embry had been right - once you got to know him he wasn’t that bad.
Adam noticed tha
t, following his outburst in the refectory, Eyre had been more friendly to him rather than less. The passing nods in corridors and cursory ‘hellos’ had evolved into short conversations. They shared the odd lesson, and sometimes Leon would be waiting around for Alice after the lessons she shared with Adam. Alice too had continued to speak to Adam, even sitting next to him in some classes.
They never spoke of politics or protests or conspiracies until the time when Adam found himself and Leon in the sparsely populated refectory one afternoon. They were both waiting for their next class to roll around, whiling away some time. Adam was catching up on some work, his books spread out on the table before them. Leon was sat on the bench facing out from the table, taking occasional swigs from his soda can.
They had chatted intermittently about various inconsequential things; Leon was planning on buying a new bicycle, Adam was irritated at a low grade he had received.
There was a period of silence when Adam became engrossed in his work. Leon drank and thought, now and then glancing about the refectory as the odd person came and went.
From nowhere, he said, “We’re going on the march on Saturday. Wanna come?”
For a second Adam assumed that someone else must have approached them, but glancing about he realised the question had been aimed at him.
“A march? Me?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I’m not into all that. I already told you how I feel about that stuff.”
Leon nodded. “We’re all going. Alice and a bunch of the others. You should come along, it might open your eyes.”
Their relationship had become cordial enough that Adam found it easy to let the remark go. Leon’s misguided political musings now seemed more whimsical than annoying.
“No, really. It’s fine,” he said. “You have fun on your march, I’ve got important stuff I need to be doing.”
“They reckon there’ll be four hundred thousand people there. It was half that number last time. Come along, just for the experience.”
Adam set his pen down. “I’ve seen these protests on the streams. Ageing hippies and rent-a-mob students. I think that’s an experience I can do without.”
“Okay,” said Leon. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah,” said Adam. “Maybe next time.”
Two
The important stuff Adam had alluded to was nothing more than extra college work. A low grade he had received in hydrodynamics class had bugged him and although he felt the fault lay with the tutor he had managed to persuade her to let him resubmit. Thus he found himself sat before a terminal on a Saturday afternoon when he might instead have been experiencing long-haired students and social workers chanting pointlessly in Washington Square Park. When it momentarily crossed his mind that Leon and Alice would be in full on protest mode around that time he thought he had the better end of the deal.
As he worked through his assignment early afternoon became late afternoon. He was surprised when he glanced down at the corner of his console to see it was four forty-five. Sitting back, he thought about taking a break. He was nearly done anyway.
The first thing he did as he slipped out of work mode was fire up his news aggregator. The first two stories were about an incident on the Pakistan border and a forecasted drop in employment rates. The third story was headlined ‘Violence Erupts at Rally.’ Violence erupted at most protests, it seemed, so it hardly felt like news to him. He clicked on the story.
‘Up to one hundred and fifty thousand people protesting the government’s handling of the energy crisis clashed with law enforcement officials this afternoon in New York’s Washington Square Park. What began as a peaceful protest rapidly degenerated into a running battle between police and protesters when a hardcore of activists began pelting police with rocks and other missiles. Some reports suggest shots were fired, though this is unconfirmed.’
Adam considered messaging Alice or Leon but thought better of it. Leon would probably regale them with his heroic war stories at college on Monday. He decided he’d go and make himself a cup of tea instead.
On returning from his tea break Adam once again slumped down in front of the terminal. The screensaver was showing dolphins swimming through strikingly clear blue water. He watched for a few moments, fascinated. He reflected on the nature of dolphins - how they are beloved of hippies, partly due to their apparently smiling faces. More or less mammalian sharks, their predatory nature is often overlooked because they seem to be smiling. ‘One may smile and smile and be a villain,’ Adam thought to himself as he watched the deceptively sweet looking dolphins.
He tapped at his controller to kill the screen saver. His aggregator was still open but the headline to the news story had changed: ‘13 Dead at Rally: Death Toll Rising.’ He immediately looked to the body of the story, which had now changed to one with live updates. The latest update was time stamped a few moments earlier:
‘16:52: NMAPD confirm further deaths, bringing the total to 13. New York Metropolitan Area Police Commissioner Gary Davies has scheduled a press conference for five-thirty. Reports of explosions remain unconfirmed.’
As he glanced down the earlier updates Adam brought up his messaging application, quickly firing off messages to Alice and Leon. ‘RU OK?’ He opened a video aggregator and searched for ‘New York /now.’ He clicked on the first video he saw. It showed a crowd of people looking confused and concerned as, on the soundtrack, some distant cracking sounds could be heard. The crowd billowed towards the camera. The video cut to a bearded man who appeared to be bleeding from somewhere just above his hairline. “They were shooting at us. We just ran,” he was saying to someone off-screen. The video cut again, this time to a long shot. It appeared to have been taken with a zoom lens and was a little shaky but it was possible to make out the blurry figures of protesters scattering in the foreground while in the distance what might have been muzzle flashes could be seen, followed seconds later by corresponding ‘crack’ sounds. The next shot was a woman wrapped in a blanket. She was shaking as she said, “I don’t know what happened. Everyone started running. I saw a boy fall - I think he’d been hit.” Abruptly, there was a logo for the video journalist who had made the report and the stream ended. Adam flicked back to his news aggregator and looked for the latest update:
‘17:01: Commissioner Davies implements ‘temporary lockdown’ on Manhattan. ‘Stay home or go home,’ says commissioner.’
Adam looked at his messaging application. There were no new messages.
The autopsy would later report that Leon Eyre was struck and killed by a single bullet which entered his head above the left eye and exited four centimetres behind and a little below his left ear. By the time emergency services reached him he was already dead. Alice’s report to Adam later that evening was more succinct: ‘Leon is dead. I’m okay. Talk later.’
Leon was one of seventeen people killed that afternoon. According to official streams the crowd had become restless and a hardcore of activists had attempted to break into the New York University Business School building where Vice President Gerard White had been making a speech. Smoke bombs and baton charges had proved ineffective at pushing the rioters back and when the crowd began pelting the police with bricks and stones they had feared for the safety of those inside the building. Explosive devices were then thrown by the rioters leaving the police with no choice but to use lethal force.
It seemed like the kind of story Adam Watson had read a thousand times before, latterly about events right there in the USAN but before that overseas in the Asian Bloc or unaligned countries. A protest gets out of hand, a small but unruly element of the protesters goads the security services, the security services respond heavy-handedly. When the dust settles, the protesters feel aggrieved that their peaceful demonstration was crushed by what they perceive to be an oppressive police force or military acting directly for the government. The police force or military feel they were justified in responding to a total breakdown in law and order. The hard-core element, the agent
provocateurs, disappear back into the crowd. Each side condemns the other and the antagonism deepens.
Though he didn’t sympathise with the protesters it was impossible not to feel shocked that people had died, particularly since some of those people had been sat around the refectory table with him just a few short weeks earlier. In that time Leon Eyre had almost become a friend, despite his paranoid worldview. Previously, Adam would have dismissed the shootings as antisocial thugs bringing about their own demise through their reckless actions. Whether it was that he knew some of the victims this time or a growing unease lurking at the back of his mind, Adam felt that there was something not quite right about what he was hearing. Leon Eyre, for all his boastfulness, didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be at the front of a crowd baiting armed police into a fight. He seemed a lot more like the type of person who would claim to have been at the centre of it later but who would have hung around just outside the danger zone, close enough to see what was going on without putting himself at risk. Near enough that his stories might seem plausible later, but actually safe.
Maybe he didn’t know Leon as well as he thought. Perhaps he underestimated him. They hadn’t spent that long in each other’s company and maybe Leon was sincere after all.
What might have happened if he had accepted Leon’s offer to go along to the March? Would it have all turned out differently? Would he have been shot too or would he have advised them to keep a safer distance. He surprised himself by feeling guilty. Perhaps if he had been there they would have taken a different course. Perhaps Leon would not be in cold storage, his parents bewildered to find themselves planning a funeral for their teenage son.
Son of New York (Ephialtes Shorts Book 3) Page 2
