The Brave and the Bold

by Hans G. Schantz

  “Well, honesty would be a nice change,” Johnny said shaking his head in disgust. “You two tell me you’re some kind of social-justice superstars, and I find you flaunting your organic food privilege, fat shaming the differently girthed, and misogynisticly assuming women can’t be doctors.”

  Between the stress of Hell Week and Johnny’s attack, she really was crying now.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel, back to my room,” the guy tried to comfort the crying girl. He glared at Johnny before turning back to the girl and continuing. “We can talk it out… together… alone.”

  “No. I just want to sit a while and talk. You’ll come with me?” She distanced herself from Johnny and the guy started to move her away toward the table.

  “Nice try,” Johnny told the guy, “but she’s telling you while she’s happy to use you as an emotional tampon, there’s no way she’s going back to your room with you, because there’s no reason your genetic material should propagate itself into the future – certainly not co-mingled with hers.”

  The SJWs were too triggered and shocked to even respond. The guy moved like he was going to confront Johnny.

  “It’s OK,” Johnny reassured him, sympathetically. “I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for you. Why, if this happened to me, I’d be so frustrated I couldn’t think straight.”

  The guy just froze like his mental circuits were overloading.

  “She’s getting away from you,” Johnny pointed out.

  The guy turned and noticed the girl was already wandering off. He rushed away and caught up with her, his hand hovering a couple inches above her shoulder as if he were afraid to make physical contact. They limped off toward the tables at the perimeter of the ballroom, the girl crying and the guy’s face red with humiliation and rage at Johnny’s insults.

  Johnny turned and saw me watching him. “Yeah?” He dared me to say something.

  “That was cruel,” I pointed out.

  “Two NPCs down, a ballroom full to go,” he said defiantly.

  “NPCs?”

  “Non-Player Characters,” Johnny clarified. “The stock computer-controlled characters in a video game that you have to get through in order to find and attack the real enemy.”

  That was an interesting perspective. “Who is the real enemy?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he acknowledged, “so for now, I’ll just deal with the NPCs. As for you, well, I’ll be praying for you.” He moved on to approach the next group.

  I continued my search and saw Kirin. She looked stunning, clearly enjoying the attention from Travis Tolliver and a coterie of male admirers who had her circled. No wonder Johnny was pissed off.

  I finally found Rob, busing a tray. I let him know I’d confirmed the entrance in the cottage and that I’d arrange for the Albertians to be assigned the cottage we needed access to. The network tap was in place and active. I told him about the acid barrels in the Berkshire Inn’s warehouse of horror. “Bastards,” he muttered. “Can you get me a key?”

  I was ready for that one. I slid an extra keycard into a cocktail napkin and put it on the tray he was busing.

  “The bar is over there, sir,” Rob offered loudly, “but you’ll have to show an ID.” He had a twinkle in his eye, obviously recalling how I got in trouble at the GammaCon event just a few months earlier.

  “Thanks.” I left Rob to his duties, and continued circulating.

  I found Amit talking with a girl in a cocktail dress. It was Madison, one of our classmates from the Social Justice Initiative at Georgia Tech. She’d obviously not been through Hell Week. “Madison!” I interrupted her conversation with Amit. “What brings you here?”

  “I’ve been invited to speak about the misogyny and racism at Georgia Tech,” she said proudly. “There’s a big panel discussion tomorrow just after lunch.”

  “What about Marcus and Ryan and the rest of the Social Justice Ambassadors from Tech?” I asked her.

  “They’re not invited,” Madison exclaimed. “This event is only for the most important activists.”

  I wasn’t going to dispute her, but arguably, Marcus and Ryan were the most effective activists at Tech. They’d made a huge impact collaborating to expose the universal surveillance of telecommunications. Only that wasn’t exactly the kind of activism Professor Gomulka really wanted. He was suspicious of them, and rightly so, because both were key figures in the FOG. Marcus saved my butt a few months ago when I was trying to escape a Civic Circle strike team.

  “I have the night off,” Amit brushed some strands of greasy hair from his forehead. “Why don’t we head back to my room?”

  “I can’t believe you!” she exclaimed. “You can’t be asking me back to your room when not thirty minutes ago I saw you making out with that girl from UCLA!”

  “What can I say?” Amit said, staring down at her cleavage oozing up from her rather low-cut cocktail dress. “I’m in demand, and you’re looking fine tonight.”

  “Eyes up here!” she pointed to her face.

  Amit laughed. “Be honest. You did not wear that dress here so I’d be looking at your eyes all night.” He reached over and took her arm. “Two independent spirits far from home rekindling the fire?”

  “You need to take a shower,” Madison insisted, wrinkling her nose.

  “That could be arranged,” Amit agreed, amiably.

  I could see her wavering.

  “They say, ‘What happens on Jekyll Island, stays on Jekyll Island,’ you know?”

  They did? Or was Amit just making that up?

  “Maybe later,” Madison insisted.

  I was realizing that if I’d really wanted to hook up with Jessica, I should have escalated further and insisted on slipping out with her when I had the chance. At least I could help Amit.

  “In another hour, Amit will have hooked up with someone else,” I offered confidently, trying to be a good wingman for him. “You should grab him now, while you...”

  “Peter Burdell,” the loudspeaker announced, cutting me off. “Amit Patel. Please come to the information desk, Peter Burdell and Amit Patel.”

  Damn. That didn’t seem good. Amit and I shared a look of apprehension, excused ourselves from Madison, and made our way to the information desk. “Someone wants to speak with you,” one of the plainclothes security men said. “Come with us.”

  We were escorted to a limo which took us to the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. Two more security officers escorted us to a deluxe suite.

  “Send them in,” a voice commanded.

  We stepped in. The minions shut the door behind us.

  “My name is Bernard. Please,” he said, gesturing toward the couch, “be seated.” I recognized him. He was the Civic Circle representative who’d interviewed us both this past spring for the Civic Circle internship opportunity. He was also Gomulka’s immediate superior in the Civic Circle hierarchy.

  Amit and I sank deeply into the soft cushions. Bernard sat down in a large chair. Bernard’s throne-like perch was at least six inches higher than our level. He peered down at us from his position of authority.

  “You both were in Professor Gomulka’s social justice class at Georgia Tech.” He continued without waiting for us to acknowledge him. “The events there this spring were… disappointing.” He paused to encourage us to fill the silence with nervous babbling and self-justification.

  Amit and I remained impassive.

  I saw a hint of a smile on Bernard’s face. “I need to understand what happened there. The campus was ripe for convergence. Professor Gomulka is a skilled activist. We have our ways of… monitoring what is going on. There seems to have been a profound… change at Georgia Tech.”

  He had to be referring to the Civic Circle’s Nexus Detector. Amit and I both put on our best “confused” faces. Finally, Amit spoke, “But there really was very little change,” he pointed out. “Other than those physics professors leaving, I mean. The institution as a whole is pretty much unchanged.”

  “Exactly,” B
ernard replied. “There was supposed to be a new dean of the School of Engineering. We had allies in all the right places and a top activist in place to organize student support for the convergence. It should have happened. All the signs were there, all the trends were moving in the right direction. And yet, it didn’t happen. Something acted, something interfered, to prevent it.”

  His insight was spooky. Did Bernard know he was looking at the two people most responsible for thwarting his schemes for Georgia Tech? Before I could divert his attention, Amit spoke up.

  “There was a great deal of resistance,” Amit pointed out. “Reactionary professors rallied students in counter-protests.”

  “There has been resistance before,” Bernard observed, “but not like this.”

  Bernard needed a target for his suspicions. The moment was perfect. “I’m not convinced Professor Gomulka was up to the job,” I said, trying to get the right tone of reluctance in my voice. “He was fixated on Alinsky’s 1960s-era community organizing tactics – on working within the system to effect peaceful change. He treated the campus like a pre-converged target that just needed a nudge in the right direction to fall into place, and he didn’t adapt quickly enough when it became clear the place was actually anti-converged. He faced formidable opposition, and he lacked the decisiveness and ruthlessness to force the events to a successful conclusion.”

  “Really?” Bernard looked skeptically toward me. “You’re willing to throw your professor under the bus?”

  “It’s the simple truth,” I insisted as calmly as possible. “The events demonstrated that Professor Gomulka simply wasn’t up to the job.”

  “Your friend, Amit, thinks I should allow you to join Civic Youth. I have to ask myself though, how can I trust you as my subordinate,” Bernard asked dryly, “when you exhibit so little loyalty to your superiors?”

  “Professor Gomulka just told me what to do,” I explained. “He never asked me what I thought or how we could do better. You just did, so I answered you. If you want a swarm of Ivy-League ass-kissers telling you how smart you are and how everything you do is wonderful,” I countered, “then I’m not your man. If you want someone who knows the score and isn’t afraid to tell you so when you ask me directly, well, here I am.”

  Bernard chuckled in amusement. “I thought your friend Amit was the ruthless one. It seems I may have under-estimated you. You came across so polite, so idealistic, so delightfully scrupulous in our interview.”

  “You don’t play your cards face up if you don’t have to.” I smiled thinly back at him. “Now you’ve backed me into a corner. Professor Gomulka is a fine teacher, and an effective activist, but he’s not the man to crush the hard-core reactionaries at Georgia Tech.”

  “You think you’re qualified to pass judgement on a seasoned activist like Professor Gomulka?” Bernard narrowed his eyes. “You. A teenage college student wanna-be activist knows more than his professor with decades of experience at community organizing?”

  “I may not have much experience, but I do know one thing.” I looked Bernard right in the eye. “Gomulka failed. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. If you send Gomulka back to Georgia Tech, he’ll flounder about next year, just like he did last year. I’m not saying I could do better than him, but I sure as hell can see how he screwed up, and I know better than to repeat his mistakes.”

  “What mistakes were those?” Bernard asked.

  “He was too genteel,” I observed. “He wanted a dialog, a debate with the reactionary leader, Professor Muldoon. He was so busy reading his Alinsky that he forgot his Marcuse – there can be no free speech for hate speech. He treated Muldoon as a colleague, as an equal, as a fellow professor who merely had a different opinion, not as an enemy to be destroyed.”

  “I understand he tried to get Muldoon fired for some impropriety,” Bernard corrected him.

  “He never should have agreed to that discussion with Muldoon,” I pointed out. “Even if his scheme to take out Muldoon had worked, it was granting equal validity to reactionary ideas. When his scheme to get rid of Muldoon backfired, the discussion blew up in his face. Muldoon rallied enough of the influential alums and regents to his side that he blocked Doctor Ames from taking over the College of Engineering.”

  “Dr. Ames withdrew her application when it became obvious how hopelessly reactionary Georgia Tech was,” Bernard insisted.

  “A nice face-saving gesture,” I countered, “but let’s be honest about it. After Gomulka screwed up and let Muldoon rally the opposition, Ames was through. Even if she took the job, her position would have been so weak she wouldn’t have been effective.”

  Bernard stared at me. I stared right back, daring him to be the first to fill the silence. “So,” he conceded, “what would you do if you were in my place?”

  “Transfer Gomulka to a nice, safely-converged campus, and let him carry on indoctrinating more social justice warriors in a supportive setting,” I suggested. “It doesn’t have to be a negative – he did a brilliant job exposing the bigoted and reactionary attitudes that pervade Georgia Tech, you can tell everyone. He’s being rewarded with an appointment to a more elite, but safely-converged campus. Get in someone new for Georgia Tech. A real fighter. Someone not afraid to get his hands dirty.”

  “Who?” Bernard looked at me with a thin smile. “You?”

  “No,” I acknowledged. “I can see where Gomulka went wrong, but I’m not the one to solve the problem. I can help, but I don’t have the experience to lead.”

  “I’m glad you at least recognize your limitations,” Bernard said thoughtfully. He looked at Amit. “You’ve been awfully quiet while your friend here has been maligning Gomulka. Do you agree with him?”

  Amit paused as if Bernard had to pull the answer out of him. “Yes,” he replied, reluctantly. “It’s true. I’ve had my doubts about Professor Gomulka as well. It’s as if… as if he’s just going through the motions. It’s like he has other plans, other agendas, and his work at Georgia Tech is just… putting on some kind of a show. I don’t trust him, either.”

  “You, too,” Bernard shook his head sadly. “Your lack of loyalty is… disturbing. I see what you’re both doing. Betraying your leader. Hoping you get a new leader who will have to rely on you, to be your tool, instead of you being the tools of the leader I appoint over you. Trying to build your own power base at the expense of the man I put in charge over you. We had great hopes for you, Amit. You could have been in the elite, maybe even a full member of the Civic Circle, eventually. With great privilege comes great responsibility, though. If you can’t be obedient, if you can’t show loyalty to your leaders… we have no use for backstabbing wanna-be activists who don’t know their place.”

  Bernard faced Amit. “You’re fired. You,” he turned to me, “You may not work for me, but you’re as good as fired too. I’m good friends with Larry Tolliver, CEO of Tolliver Corporation. I’m going to have a word with Travis Tolliver. Both of you get out, and don’t come back.”

  Chapter 10: The Inner Circle

  Bernard moved more quickly than I’d expected. Amit’s room reservation was already cancelled, and his packed bags were waiting for him in the lobby of the Berkshire Inn. As an IT peon, my reservations were in the name of the company, not me personally, so apparently my room hadn’t been cancelled, yet.

  We put our phones in the microwave and went into the bathroom to talk quietly, masked by the sound of the running water.

  “Might be safer to work your magic with the registration system,” I suggested, “and get us into a different room.”

  “If Bernard wanted to kill us, he could have already. Besides, the hotel is booked solid,” Amit countered. “Too much chance of them spotting my handiwork.”

  “Someone will have cancelled a reservation or no-showed,” I pointed out. “There’s always an empty room or two. The Gomulka sting is going down tonight. No telling what an uproar it might cause.”

  �
��Look, Pete. Times like this, any half-way decent hotel manager is watching the reservation system and already has a dozen people on a waiting list staying off Jekyll Island who want a room here. I can’t mess with the database without it being obvious and raising questions.”

  Amit paused, the fatigue on his face was clear. “What with the sleep deprivation and indoctrination games they’ve been playing with all the Civic Youth, I haven’t showered or had more than a few hours of sleep the last few days. Now isn’t the time for me to try some fancy database hack when the victims are at maximum alert, we’re under surveillance, and I’m falling apart. I’m going to clean up and get some sleep. Get out if you don’t want to watch me shower.”

  I had yet to see Johnny. I was pretty sure he was staying with Kirin. I let Amit crash with me in my anonymous room.

  Our anonymity didn’t last long, however. Somehow they tracked me down. Or maybe they pounded their way through all the doors TAGS had reserved for the interns. We were awakened just after five in the morning. “Security. Open up.”

  I looked through the peephole at the two plainclothes security officers and cracked the chained door open. “We’re looking for Peter Burdell and Amit Patel.” He took a good look at me and compared it to a photo he had.

  “Yes, that’s us.” No point in denying it.

  “Get dressed. Someone needs to speak with you downstairs.”

  I was a bit surprised they let us dress unsupervised, but when we opened the door there were four of them waiting for us. They’d gotten reinforcements. They were polite enough in asking us to come with them, but the unstated “or else” was clear in their manner.

  They took us down the elevator, through the lobby and to a limo idling in front of the hotel. They assumed a loose formation around us – two in front and two behind – so we couldn’t bolt if we’d wanted to. The limo driver opened the door.

  “Sorry to get you up so early,” Bernard said. “Get in. We need to talk.” Sorry? As Amit and I climbed in he asked, “Do you have cell phones?” He had us surrender our phones and he put them in a foil bag in a cooler. Interesting. Whatever Bernard wanted to talk about, he didn’t want it to be overheard.