1.
It was a bright cold day in April and glancing at his iPhone, Winston could see it was 1pm. He walked into his apartment building, nodding at the doorman as he passed on to the elevators. Which worked fine, as always, carrying him up to the floor where his modestly prosperous apartment was.
Entering, he noticed that he'd left the TV on. Not that it mattered either way, the CIA, NSA and who knows how many other agencies could view him or listen to him whether that was on or off. Including his own employers at the FBI. And if he broke the TV, they could just switch over to his phone, laptop or iPad. He kept his face composed, not because he felt that there was any particular reason for them to be watching him, but given his constant disloyal thoughts and general dislike of the system, he felt better being safe.
No one could long contemplate the system without some paranoia. Especially when they were a part of it.
Looking out the window he could see the capitol in all of it's glory. Flags flying in the air, bunting and signs up for various "weeks". Flags only flying half mast he idly noticed. As when were they not nowadays? It seemed that he remembered hearing once that they used to be only lowered for some enormously important death, but nowadays any bureaucrat's heart attack or random mass shooting could do it.
An ad for the Army was playing, looking like every action movie he'd ever seen, he'd been seeing more of those ads lately, there must be a new incursion brewing. Glancing back at the window, he saw a helicopter in the distance, but it was only a police copter and they didn't matter. Only the satellites and monitoring gear of the intelligence agencies mattered.
Winston had left work at his office in a substation of the FBI and drove back to his apartment early. That meant that not only would he miss any "networking" time to be had in the cafe there, but that his boss would wonder at him taking half a sick day. Worse than this was his buying of a diary in that local store.
Not that there was anything illegal about that, nothing was really legal or illegal any more, except that well, yes, it was all pretty much legal till they didn't like you, then it was all pretty much illegal. Do they like the cause of Breast Cancer reduction? Then you're having a legal and peaceful march for awareness. Do they dislike the cause of getting the troops out of the enemy nation of the week? Then you're having an illegal riot. And by the time the planted provocateurs are done, it will be quite a riot.
And after any gassings and/or beatings, all your property will be seized, bank accounts, cars, etc. More often than not, they'd even let you go afterward, with only the briefest of time in jail. To go on with a criminal record more permanent than a scarlet letter. To go and live off the kindness of family that will say "I told you so" and "You can't fight City Hall". Desperation and desolation were the modern punishments, not death and dismemberment. At least if you're a Westerner.
And at that, you don't want to annoy them too much. If you do, then there's always prison, with beatings and rape and still worse, solitary confinement.
Winston opened the diary he'd got at Hallmark, a little shop near a gas station/grocery store that he'd ducked into by impulse, instead of getting straight back into his car like he should have. But what were the odds of them looking at the gas station cameras, or the ATM cameras, or the traffic cams, or even the satellite images?
Only if you gave them cause to would they then scan about your life. And if they once started, they had you, that was a given. With every phone call, every text, every IM and every unguarded moment at their disposal, there was always something for them to find, if they cared to. The trick then was for them to never have reason to look at you.
He had paid cash to the young man at the counter, a young man who looked at him curiously. Not many of the upper-middle bureaucratic classes must come in here, Winston thought. Used to only the regular taxpayers coming in. But then, this gas station was in the not so nice section of DC.
Getting out his pen to start writing in his diary, while sitting at his desk so that to an observer he might just be going over his budget, he felt a wave of helplessness. He didn't fear punishment, he knew he could get a mundane job in the Midwest if all they had on him was odd behavior. Typically you have to really threaten them to get a harsher punishment than economic exile, just disagreeing privately was generally tolerated. Not condoned, he'd be fired, but tolerated in that it wasn't a Snowden level offense to simply not like them.
The helplessness was over what to write. And who to write to. The nation was for crap, just another lousily ran tax farm in a world where there were nothing but tax farms. Save some parts of Antarctica, which even if you could live there, was under the control of or being claimed by no less than two dozen different powers all eager to see what oil might be obtained, now that the tech allowed it.
Freedom as a concept was taught to every school child, but having taught it, never gave. Except that most thought they had it. Universal surveillance, IDs required for any kind of travel, any kind of work, any kind of aid, random searches at airports, court houses, the street, any where they felt like it.
He had his pen hovering over the paper, should he write of all that? To what point? It had all been said before, it had been said forever, complaining like that was the only freedom anyone had left. At least so long as you didn't persuade too many others. A news personality, a pundit, they had to keep themselves in check or risk getting fired or "let go" by the mega-corps that held their contracts. Same with celebrities - complain this far, and no further. Or watch the parts dry up.
He knew of nothing to write that could make a difference. And did anyone even care? Would anyone ever care? Most - no, all - of those he knew on or off line were like the birds in giant zoo cages convinced they had freedom as their cage wall was too far away for them to care to reach it. And by "far away", people meant an ever shrinking circumference that where once it had been measured in miles, now was only a matter of yards, and scant yards at that.
This shouldn't be so difficult, he thought. All he had to do was write of all the thoughts that he'd been thinking since he was a child, since that day when those two idiots dressed identically had come by to deliver a rote grief speech about how nobly his father had died for freedom. As in his father was killed by a citizen of another nation who had not liked being invaded and even more not liked losing his father. That "insurgent" had took it upon himself to set up an improvised explosive device to take out some American fathers.
And all for a non-existent freedom here, and even less of it in one of the too many to count conquered states that we enjoy calling "allies".
Suddenly, he started writing furiously, as if to prove that his folly had not been in vain. "April 4, 2024 - saw a movie, action/adventure, real 3D, and not the plastic glasses of childhood. One scene had a ship full of refugees in the Gulf of Mexico about to land in Florida, and our hero just knew that a terrorist was hiding among them, it cut to showing them from the hero's view, and then he shot the bad guy smack in the chest, but the terrorist was wearing a suicide bomb vest and he no sooner flopped backwards out of the boat when he blew up and the whole boat full of women and kids died, turning the water around the boat dark with blood and gore, but the audience was glad, because the bomb had been meant for the Christian Children's Fundraiser that the hero's wife was hosting, and those dead were illegals anyway, and if this disturbed anyone in the audience, they weren't showing it, and why should they, so long as the hero then looked somber at the insanity of the terrorist, well then the boat full of innocents blowing up was not his fault do they ever show anything besides these trite moral situations in which America is always right and even when wrong is only wrong due to a rogue and then the real hero shows that America was right after all - - "
Winston stopped, not only for not being used to writing long hand, but for the realization of what utter crap he was writing. It had made him realize that something else was on his mind, and that was the woman from Human Resources who he had seen at the office a few times. Something about her always suggested that she was an ardent patriot, ready to do or die for truth, justice and the American way. He couldn't stand such types. The ones who thought voting mattered. He fantasized about the two of them winding up on a desert island so he could show her what was what and who was who - the TV interrupted his thoughts, some breaking news.
But when wasn't it breaking news? "Forces in Gandmar have succeeded in routing insurgent elements of the failed Caliphate, bringing the liberation of that town within measurable distance of the end..." Uh oh, thought Winston, must be bad news coming. And sure enough, he wasn't disappointed. By a 5 to 4 decision, the practice of using drones to kill fleeing felons was upheld, even in cases in which "unavoidable civilian casualties" were incurred. Am I the only one who remembers reading "Fahrenheit 451", he wondered?
2.
Two weeks later, Winston was sitting in his cubicle in the Trends and Analysis section. He enjoyed his work, for all that he recognized that he was a part of the very system he abhorred. Today he was working on a project that involved charting the upswing of membership in various "End Times" churches in the Midwest, as such were - while a steady source of votes for the current administration - also the largest pool from which the disaffected and disenfranchised "domestic terrorists" were known to come from. Well, besides discharged veterans who'd seen combat. Somehow, no matter how many bones were tossed to the Conservative Right, they always felt that they were the oppressed.
His was only one part of the rather large project, but he dutifully inputted in all the data and did up a brief but accurate summary of the latest in Upper Peninsula, Michigan, which not for the first time he really thought should be either "North Wisconsin" or better yet, it's own damn state.
He wondered if others despised him as much as he despised his superiors. He was, after all, one of the oppressors, as hard as it was for him to truly believe that in his heart. He did seem to be the only one aware of the real hierarchy in the United States, with the One Percenters being the head, the government in general - Bureaucrats, Judges, Cops and Soldiers - being the hands, and the great unwashed tax payers - and tax receivers - being the body. The voiceless and choiceless body. Not that we hands had any real say either. Just a few more perks at the price of a slavish loyalty to the powers that be du jour and the attendant utter disengaging of the conscience.
Or was he the only one who felt that way, and the others believed in the system? Julia from Human Resources seemed to believe. His neighbor Parsons, Conservatard of the Year as far as Winston could tell, believed. Even Symes, that flaming liberal from Anti-Terrorism, as intelligent as he seemed to be, showed all signs of accepting the system at face value. Are we all lying to each other? Or am I the lone renegade, a "terrorist" too cowardly to commit terror, and so condemned to futile impotence, year after year till retirement?
Is my discontent even real? Or is this a twenty-something phase? Certainly it seemed impossible that a person could go through an entire life like this, where meaningless work designed only to keep others down was the best you could look forward to, and all for an endless succession of lying thieves and killers in "leadership" who no matter the party name, always played the same tyrannical game.
Winston took his leave to go to lunch. Looking about the cafe he wondered at the way the people looked. It was easy to think, if you went by the TV, the movies and magazines, that the average North American male was handsome and rugged and fit, and the female was thin to the point of emaciation and hot. We are a nation of super-models and lumberjacks with three day stubble in the media. But such were never found in life. Those around him were like him, healthy enough, but in a soft and incipiently sloppy way. With a cynicism about them that implied they knew things they weren't saying.
Not political things, but naughty things. Though what was left naughty in this world of pot and homosexuality and BDSM and quality of life drugs and sister wives and interns always chose for their sex appeal, Winston could not say. Nor cared to. He felt he was a minority of one, that he wanted an actual soulmate, but he had to stay single, for his career would end as fast as a lover could find his private book collection.
"Brave New World", "It Can't Happen Here", "Unintended Consequences", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "This Perfect Day", "Atlas Shrugged", "The Probability Broach" and such. And by "such" he meant preparedness magazines and books on homesteading, canning and everything else needful to run off into the hills. No one single book would raise too high an eyebrow, some of the political dystopias were, bizarrely, taught to children in public schools, in what had to be the most egregious self-referential example of Doublethink in all history. But taken all together, especially with his deceased father's unlicensed handgun, it would end his career, and possibly (on the gun charge) end his freedom at once.
Still, a man gets lonely, and prostitution, even in this glorified modern Sodom, was still inexplicably illegal. Unless you were rich and the whore could be called an "escort", "companion" or "sugar baby". Again, legal...till they didn't like you, then illegal. Winston resolved to ask Julia out. He'd make sure that if it worked out, they'd go to her place.
Going back to his office, his heart fluttered to see the woman he loved to hate - hated to love? - coming down the hall towards him. He pretended to look past her as if absorbed in getting back to his office work, but she stopped and said brightly, "Winston, isn't it? Trends?" to which he could only mutely nod. "My dinner date cancelled on me tonight, but I'll be damned if I'm giving up my reservation at The Lafayette, I thought it'd be nice if you took me!"
The innocent brazenness of her inviting him to pay for such an expensive restaurant was oddly charming, Winston thought, and with only a bit of stammering he managed to graciously accept and arrange for when to pick her up. Bemusedly he walked on to his office, admittedly feeling a bit better than he had in awhile. So much so that he actually felt a bit nervous, too, as he wasn't sure he really wanted any woman to mean anything to him at this point in his life, let alone mean too much.
He looked at the stack of paperwork on his desk. The first three were routine, but the fourth looked interesting. "re PBAmeme82G 3/17/24 insuff like/shares cause?", which translating from bureaucratic short hand jargon meant, "In regards to the Police Benevolent Association's 82nd pro-police meme in the G series placed on various social media outlets on March 17th, there were not sufficient "likes" and "shares" of it, and the cause of this needs to be determined."
This kind of thing was Winston's bread and butter and he prided himself on being good at it. True, it could just be a lousy meme, and often that was the case, the police being no better at propaganda than they were at not killing unarmed black teens. But sometimes there was a deeper underlying cause, and if so, that had to be known at once.
Pulling the keyboard towards him, Winston first called up the meme in question, a fairly standard one of how a policeman had took a hot meal to an elderly shut in. Probably wanted to lay the old woman's college age granddaughter, Winston thought, but no, such things were usually just purely staged with whichever cop had pissed off his immediate supervisor being made to play the faux Samaritan. He noted that the elderly woman was black, not wholly unexpected, but a bit of an overkill for the target area of predominantly Finnish, Swedish and other Nordic types.
Next Winston dug up news reports from the past few weeks leading up to the placed meme. Ahh, there it was, a cop had shot a teen boy who it turned out had been unarmed. No wonder the PBA - or any of the LEO loving groups they so often delegated such work to - had seen fit to come up with some pro-cop stuff. But what's this? A click on the headline of "teen dead in officer related shooting" shows the full article in which a white teen was killed by a black cop! Man bites dog, Winston thought, but at least now the "insuff" was explained.
Good people up there, but no ingrained love of law and order was going to overcome their nervousness at a black man shooting a white kid. He would have to email the department that liaisons with the police and their supporters, and without mentioning race manage to explain how to correct that. Glancing over at the next cubicle, he saw a counterpart of his feverishly clicking and typing away, and it struck him that they were probably having several analysts look at this one.
What should the correction be? Winston knew that it was only his job to identify the problem, but he felt sure that a smartly suggested solution would serve him well. Instead of the white cop helping the old black lady, should it be a black cop helping an old white lady? To take the sting out of black cop having shot a white kid? No, too obvious, and on the heels of the one that didn't go over well, it would make even the dumbest cop lovers wonder. Has to be something different.
Winston got it. He leaned over and started writing the email that explained the dichotomy between black cop/white victim and how the propaganda of white cop/black aid subject would not correct that. That he did that without mentioning race was why he got the big bucks, he joked to himself. Now for the piece de resistance, he thought. A meme needed to be distributed of a black cop trying to change a flat tire on his own squad car - and a white family getting out to help him!
The subtle inference would be that everyone has accidents, and we should help out our police friends no matter their color. The Scandahoovians up there would feel good and condescending about aiding a black man, and at the same time be taught that it was their duty to aid cops no matter their color. A win-win. Winston glanced over at his competitor again. Did he have anything as good? Winston doubted it, and felt sure that it would be his idea done up as a meme later and pushed for that area.
3.
That evening Winston exited his apartment, and almost ran into a group of Boy Scouts flooding into the lobby with their scoutmaster who, in Winston's opinion, had on entirely too much eye make up. Escaping that noisy crowd, he managed to hail a taxi and headed to the restaurant. On the way he saw a group of protesters standing quietly in a cordoned off area, three signs between the five of them, exercising their "right" to assemble where told to on issues they had permission to complain about.
He thought of how he longed for there to be a real underground, and not just dummy undergrounds choked with FBI agents, undercover police, Confidential Informants and hapless "innocents" turned into snitches with various crimes held over their heads that they could be prosecuted for if they did not report on their family and friends. He knew full well that if there were any hope for real freedom, it would be in the great unwashed masses, the 85% who had absolutely no say in the government.
If only they could be roused! If only they could be torn away from their perfectly functioning refrigerators and their flat screen TVs and their internet. What chance would the government have if they ever rose up at once and shook off their chains? Winston shook his head though, because he knew that they'd never all rise up at once. And at such times as some rose up, here and there, now and then, for some particularly vile bit of police brutality or some egregious land theft from the Natives, they were ruthlessly put down by a police so militarized that you might as well refer to the Army as "police-icized".
In theory the masses were free. They got to vote for who would rob and exploit them locally, and while it was mentioned every four years, the existence of the Electoral College never stopped them from thinking that their vote counted for President. It was taught that without this system, the masses would be poor and dirty and die young, like in whatever country in Africa it was still okay to pan on. And Winston supposed it could be true. How could you really tell?
Maybe this system with all it's faults was, if not the best of all possible worlds, at least the "least bad" of all the other crappier systems. The only evidence to the contrary was the vague feeling that things were not really to be like this, that such voicelessness in the direction of the nation and such subservience as was required to even the least TSA goon was not as it should be. That the crashes and bubbles and 401(k) hits and bail outs for big boys but never for you meant that some kind of funny robbery was taking place, and it wasn't the leaders being robbed.
Life, if any of the masses cared to look about them, bore no relationship to the lies that hourly came out of their TVs. Where every house in the shows and movies were large, luxurious, and spacious beyond belief, and every other one of them had a pool. Where even the "poor" on TV owned two story houses with four bedrooms and had a couple of working cars. Yet the taxi was driving him past endless apartments that had no doormen, and streets of houses smaller than on TV - and duplexed at that. Perhaps this gave the masses incentive to strive harder. To achieve what it seemed that everyone else had.
To Winston it just made him wonder if the televised luxury wasn't what everyone could have if billion dollar bailouts and quantitative easings and trillion dollar wars didn't take place with such frequency that it could honestly be said that they never ended. I mean, when weren't the big boys being caught in acts of corruption that only fleeced the little people?
It was never ending. Like that list he had seen online one evening, before clicking away from it in a hurry, in which with every incursion, police action, war, occupation and such listed out, there was no single year since 1898 in which the United States military wasn't busy overseas. How many mistakes could the financial world make, year after year, decade after decade? How many enemies could be about to take over America?
When he arrived, Julia was already there, really working her "modest is hottest" look. A look easier for a woman to pull off if she really was hot, Winston had always thought. And Julia was. Careful, he thought. Careful. But just looking at her made caution difficult. She seemed happy to see him, and gushed and fawned over him when he entered, thanking him for helping her out as if it were some big favor he'd done in coming to dine with a beautiful woman. They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes till they were seated.
She let him order for both of them, and it was to her credit that she let that seem to happen naturally. She really was remarkably easy to get along with. They chatted about work, swapped anecdotes about the foibles that only those in the FBI would be aware of, and generally had a good time. Towards the end, when Winston was wondering if ordering dessert were appropriate, or if he could dare try and go home with her, she said, "I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "
She paused expectantly, and Winston was at a loss for what to do. He recognized Thoreau, of course, but what possible reason could she have for sharing the first part with him? Still, while Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" and "Life without Principle" were quite revolutionary, properly understood, it had retained a certain safety due to the majority of Thoreau's writings being about nature. A darling of the environmentalists and the English teachers, he was yet another light that could be shined for the populace while they were in school, that would later go on to illuminate nothing in their lives of - heh, heh, Winston chuckled to himself - quiet desperation.
"That government is best which governs not at all", finished Winston at which point Julia broke into delighted laughter. "Oh, wonderful, a man of literacy and a lover of freedom! I knew it, I knew it, I can always spot them, though there are so few to spot nowadays! Please, reassure me, you don't vote, do you?" Winston couldn't help but have his spirits lifted by such a response, but made motions with his hands as if to hush her. "Okay, okay, you caught me, I don't vote - I believe it only encourages them!", he said, which prompted another peal of laughter from her. "And now," he continued made bold by this exchange, "I say we continue this conversation more privately. Is your apartment nearby?"
"Yes.", she said, stopping laughing at once. "And it's fine you don't trust me yet. You will. And I already trust you, I've been watching you a long time, and you forget, I'm in Human Resources!" She said the last with a smile, but while Winston wasn't truly worried about this being any kind of elaborate ruse - it wasn't as if he'd done anything for such an effort to be undertook - he did note that she certainly figured that such things were possible. One doesn't advise that there aren't any earthquakes, unless earthquakes happen now and then.
As they rode to her place in a taxi, Winston thought that this was what comes from each of them being in their mid-twenties. Then he disengaged rational thought for a bit, in the joy of being tangled up with her in the backseat, kissing her lips, her throat, her cheeks, and letting his hands explore her as her hands explored him. All too soon they arrived, and the cab driver, a middle aged man, put it in park without saying a word and pulled out his iPhone so he could play with that while waiting for them to notice that he'd stopped the cab.
Winston gave him a fifty, and waved away the change. The older man grinned knowingly, nodded, and drove off. Winston and Julia went hand in hand past her door man and up to her apartment, as relatively prosperous as Winston's own. The living room was neat and austere, and frankly looked a bit like one of those model homes where everything is just so. Nearly dragging him, Julia took him down a pretty long hall to her bedroom, and flicked on the light.
He was amazed at the disarray first, and then immediately after by the size. She had either inherited it like this, or had it done herself, but what was obviously meant to have been three bedrooms had been turned into one giant bedroom, and the first two doors had been took out, so you had to walk all the way down the long hall, go through the last door and buttonhook back in to one great room. And no, it wasn't any bizarre sex thing, the bed was at the far end, and looked normal enough, save that it was unmade and a tray of what looked to be the remains of a midnight snack were on it. Or breakfast. Too far away to tell.
What took up the vast majority of the room was books! Endless books! All three walls, all but the wall the bed butted up against, were covered in custom shelves that went from the floor to the ceiling! Winston saw that his worries over his paltry collection of a dozen or so "freedom books" (as he thought of them) were sorely misplaced. Here was a thing to worry about, Heinlein, Spooner, Thoreau, von Mises, Bastiat - all of Ayn Rand, even the "Early Ayn Rand", even her "Marginalia"! - philosophers from Aristotle to Marx to Popper to Korzybski, economic texts by the dozens, sociology, history, anthropology. Literature and more literature. "Guns, Germs and Steel" on a pile of laundry in the middle of the floor, and "The Naked Ape" on top of that!
His eyes could not even take it in all at once, and he knew that if he had to choose between an hour on that bed or an hour browsing, he might have to sit down and think about it! She watched his reaction like a girl looking at her dad while dad reads her superlatively great report card. He looked at her, back to the books, and back to her. "Anyone else seen this?", he asked in a neutral tone. "No,", she said, "And thank you so much, that was the EXACT right question to ask me! Oh, I knew I had a feeling about you!"
She went to the night stand, which turned out to be a dorm fridge filled with wine, and took out a bottle. Twisting it open without ceremony, she filled the glass already on the stand, looked about for a minute, then looked apologetic and said, "Forgive me, let me get another glass from the kitchen while you make yourself at home!" Hurrying out with a quick peck on his lips as she squeezed past him through the doorway, she disappeared down the hallway while Winston went to one section to have a closer look.
Yes, it was a complete set of Heinlein scifi, including his later stuff when he'd become far more libertine than libertarian. Still, impressive. As were all the L. Neil Smiths he saw further down. But wait, before Heinlein, was that - yes, it was! Leo Frankowski and Harlan Ellison! Further back, Orson Scott Card and Isaac Asimov, yes, she had these all in alphabetical order. But this section was small, he was even more fascinated by the endless numbers of texts and tomes of serious thinkers.
She was back now, grinning, and filled a glass for him. "To the world, as it appears now!" she intoned, but he wasn't quite sufficiently familiar with "Atlas Shrugged" to catch that reference. She laughed anyway and jumped on the bed, sitting cross legged on it. Setting her wine down on the fridge, she said, "You trust me now? Or should I show you the closet with the drum of dried wheat or the Mossberg Persuader under my bed? It's next to the AR-15 with the pre-ban flash suppressor!"
"I don't believe this!", said Winston, "I don't believe you! Looks, brains, all...all...this, what are you doing with me, a regular disaffected Joe trudging away in the sub-basement? What are you even doing in the FBI at all, instead of some ranch in Montana?" Julia laughed. "The apartment building was my aunt's and she left it to me. She gave me my peculiar tasted in literature, as I grew up with her. I could move, but I like it here. As to why you? It's because I could tell you hadn't resigned yourself to everything yet!"
4.
"So which one is 'the Book'?", Winston asked, hours later as they lay entwined on the bed, utterly spent. Julia laughed delightedly, knowing just what he meant. "There's always 'the Book', right?", she asked back. "I've noticed that, too. The one with all the answers that explains everything neatly and briefly and for everyone to understand. And all good revolutionists have such a book!"
Winston looked at her expectantly, wondering if she was leading up to having it or not having it. "Oh, you silly! I'm no revolutionary, well, besides in thought, and there is no 'book'! No one book, anyway!" Seeing his disappointment, she continued, "Okay, so there are some that come closer than others. 'The Law' by Frederic Bastiat is probably the shortest and sweetest at blowing the legitimacy of government out of the water. Ironic, as he wasn't an anarchist! 'Atlas Shrugged' gets a lot of credit, and with all it's flaws, still covers an amazing amount of truth about how things work. I think that Henry David Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' and 'Life without Principle' are still the best, though."
"I've read some of those", Winston said. "Great intellectual stuff, but not sure how practical for a revolution."
"When did I say I wanted a revolution?", Julia retorted. "But if that's your thing, I'd try 'Unintended Consequences' or 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'. Both, I guess. Or for non-fiction, the 'Little Red Book' and 'Guerrilla Warfare' by Mao Tse Tung, the second translated by Samuel Griffith. Also, sad to say, the disgustingly racist fiction of 'The Turner Diaries' and 'Hunter', deal the most practically with revolution. You'll need a strong stomach, though. For the bigoted crap in them, that is."
Winston pondered that. "So you're content with the system as it is?" he asked. "God, no!", Julia exclaimed. "But I'm comfortable and if I don't rock the boat the powers that be won't be after me and I can read and dream as much as I like! Who wants to be branded a terrorist and thrown in some SuperMax, the place where there is no darkness, where you sit in solitary 23 of 24 hours and then for variety spend the 24th hour in the same cell!?"
"Still", Winston started, "If your cause is just..." at which Julia laughingly interrupted him. "You mean like Joan d'Arc? But as little as I'd care for that, don't kid yourself. While Joan was getting into the history books, there were 10,000 others like her that very year who were being martyred without the notice of anyone then, or now. And there's been millions since. I know how young male hotheads think - you'll die gloriously storming the ramparts and the next person, seeing the flag drop from your hands will take it up, and crying out 'Wiiiinnnnnstonnnnnn!' will lead the masses to freedom and name elementary schools after you in your honor! Am I right?"
"You can make anything sound silly if you put it like that." Winston said, sounding chastened. "Oh, my poor dear!", Julia exclaimed, "I'm not mocking you, I'm trying to save you from any pointless sacrifice in case that's your thing! The thing is the State has learned since Medieval times to avoid making martyrs. If you were picked up, it would not be on the charge of 'being a freedom fighter' and you'd not get to stand tied to a stake orating some brilliant final words to inspire mankind. You'd be picked up for being a terrorist or a traitor - or maybe you've really annoyed them so they toss a drug or child porn charge on you! Then you sit in prison forever, and no one gives a crap about you, remembers you, or thinks about you!"
"Know who Gordon Kahl was?", Julia interrupted herself abruptly.
"No....", said Winston uncertainly.
"That's right. You don't. And he was martyred, a shoot out and everything. Now, tell me, how many people have you visited in jail or prison? Oh, none? Don't know anyone? What of those you read about in the papers fighting the government, you send them any letters to let them know they weren't alone?"
Winston shook his head.
"Look, dear, I'm not trying to annoy you, and I can see I am, but you must understand, it's one thing reading of revolution as a hobby, it's one thing to complain among those - like me - who are discretely sympathetic, but there's nothing to do about it. And you must sharply question your own motives in even wanting to."
Winston looked up sharply, "What do you mean by that? Can't I just want freedom?"
Julia appraised him silently. Then said, "Look, dear, we just met, but you're not the first guy I've known on fire for freedom. The thing is, though, most of them don't even know their motives, or realize that asking about their own motive is what they should already have done. If you are wishing to do something to impress the masses and gain fame and recognition, I'm telling you that it won't happen. Not only do the masses not want to be free - they think they're already free anyway!"
Winston said, "I understand. But I'm not looking for cheap martyrdom."
"Good, dear", Julia said. "But what are you wanting any kind of revolt for, then? You know such are messy and painful and people die. Why would you want that?"
"Because it's gone too far! This culture, this society is a prison already, where your freedom is but a lousy choice between lousy choices gave us! It's suffocating!", Winston exclaimed. "It suffocates me!"
"Then quit.", said Julia.
Winston looked quizzical. "You mean Go Galt? Like in 'Atlas Shrugged'?"
"Kind of", said Julia. "Stop working for your oppressors - and aiding in oppressing others. Find a humdrum job and do it. No, not a hand built cabin in the wilderness, just a regular job, regular house and raise a family."
"But what of the nation? How does freedom come from me doing that?", Winston asked.
"Remember what Galt said about Utopia?", Julia responded. "He said, 'You will not enter it until you learn that you do not need to convince or to conquer the world.' That might have been one of the truest things he said in the book, though he spent the whole book trying to do the opposite. And yes, him retreating to the woods to prove a philosophic point instead of just working a trade and raising kids was just that. But Ayn was making her own philosophic point and using fiction to express it, so not taking it literally, I can accept that. But note this - the takeaway I say you should get from it is that the world is not yours. It's not yours to 'convince or conquer'. Others are content, so let them be."
Winston snorted. "So be a Good German? Don't worry about who they round up for the camps?"
"No, I didn't say that", said Julia. "But round up who? Which camps? There are none, officially. Perhaps we could - and should - consider the vast prison population as a round up and internment in 'camps' of sorts. Certainly the "illegal" detainee tent cities. But why the leap then to revolution? Have lesser means failed? Have you done a thing at all to change things on that score - or any other score?"
Winston knew that he was getting schooled, and was preparing for what he hoped would be a brilliant rebuttal, but before he could, Julia grabbed him and pulled him back down onto her and said, "Enough! Liberate me!" and with that, political discussion ended.
5.
Six weeks later Winston was at his apartment, idly watching the evening news. Some liberals were complaining about what the currently conservative President was doing, which was what Winston clearly remembered the liberal President of the previous administration having done. And the conservatives had complained then. Now the conservatives were defending the actions of their President while denying he'd done that which they were excusing. Just as the liberals had done with their boy before.
How do they not see the stupidity and the hypocrisy? How do they not see what that says of the absurdity of the whole system? How can they not tell that their great impassioned defenses of these political parties are like ignorant slaves debating whether their Master or the Master next door is the kinder and wiser owner?
His dating Julia had become very regular, though neither had suggested living together yet. Not that he hadn't thought of it, and he was pretty sure she had given it thought, too. Each was aware that there could be difficulties, though. His persona was a disaffected liberal, her's a mild conservative. That alone might be okay, though it would raise some eyebrows. And there was the whole inter-office romance aspect, and all the HR hurdles of that. In an office culture that took note of raised eyebrows and unusual behavior, it would be like putting a target on their backs. And neither of them wanted any real scrutiny.
Their debates about what moral responsibility citizens had in an immoral system were still fruitlessly taking place. Winston admitted that Julia did have much more backing for her "free yourself and leave others alone" philosophy then he had for his vague "do something" impulses. Some of this may just be the difference between men and women, he thought. But she had at least convinced him to distrust his "action bias" as she called it.
"Of course you want to 'do something'", she had told him one evening. "Men - especially the young - always want to do something, it's their action bias. They see trouble, they don't know the best solution, the best solution might even be wait it out. But they feel that if they aren't doing something, they're worthless and the problem will get worse, so they must rush out and muck it up!"
"Might it not solve things sometimes?", he had asked. "Not as a rule," she had replied at once. "In general there are ever so many more ways of doing a thing wrong, and usually only one way of doing a thing right." He had tried to reply that there could be several "pretty close" right actions, to which it got into math and how even if 3.99999 was "pretty close" to 4, it still wasn't the answer to "What is 2 + 2?" and still was drowned out by an infinity of wronger answers like pi, 17 and Lavender.
Last night, he had managed to finally make a dent in her otherwise calm demeanor. He got her to admit that the justice system was so terrible that the prisons were, as she had idly suggested weeks ago, a de facto system of "concentration camps". With the chosen group not being Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals as in Hitler's time, but minorities, the poor and the uneducated. And of course, like in the days of the Third Reich, political prisoners thrown in the mix with all those much larger groups.
This disturbed her, as the existence of camps had always been to her a "line" that if crossed could warrant more pro-active responses. Winston figured - correctly - that she had been comfortable as an "armchair anarchist" and wasn't much interested in any kind of Liberation Front. But nor was she interested in not looking consistent. And she did have a great heart when it came to innocents suffering. As she was fond of saying, "If I had a magic wand, I'd free them, but..." and that was somehow supposed to let her get back to books and wine.
6.
Another two weeks, and another 14 lovely evenings with Julia. His house phone rang. The doorman was letting him know that Julia was on her way up. He idly turned off the TV and went to the kitchen to get some wine. Julia let herself in - they had at least exchanged keys - and swarmed into his arms. After a long kiss, which after two months was still as exciting as ever, she disengaged and went to get the glasses of wine he had poured.
Sitting down on the couch, beckoning him to sit near her with a chin nod, she passed him his glass and stretched her nylon-clad legs across his pajama covered ones. Leaning back with a sigh, she took a healthy sip of her wine, sat it down, and said, "Now what?" When that elicited only a blank look from Winston, she said, "I know you've been leading up to something, with our endless discussions on when it's proper for a citizen to do something. You've made some excellent points. So now what?"
Winston chuckled. "Oh, it's a revolutionary you want to be now!", which earned him her pushing playfully at his cheek with her foot. "Go on, you", she said, "I still say that if each person simply focused on tending their own garden - like in 'Candide' - that the world would be a better place. But you've convinced me that there really are horrors out there that people of good conscience can't perpetually do nothing about, so I'm asking you seriously, 'now what?'"
Winston was silent for ten or twenty seconds, which is somewhat long in a conversation. Finally, after Julia pushed at his cheek with her foot again, and smiled at him, he came out of his reveries and responded. "Honey," he said, "It seems to me that they won't stop what they're doing unless they are hurt. Fear, pain, these are the only things they understand. I know you hate violence, I do, too, but I can't see that anything else will get their attention."
Julia nodded gravely. "But don't we sink to their level if we do such things? Isn't violence their tool?" Winston shook his head. "No, it's not the same. We'd be using it in defense. It's moral to shoot a person in self defense, or in defense of others. This would just be on a larger scale. And you have said over and over that such would be okay in the Third Reich." Julia shook her head, but looked a bit ashamed. "I guess it's one thing to speak of what I'd do in Nazi Germany and another what I'm comfortable with in my own country. It's hard for me to view our own police as literal Nazi soldiers, though yes, you're right, I've certainly been speaking that way all this time."
Winston said, "Yes, come to think of it, you've been pretty hot and heavy on what all violence could be justified against Nazis. Why the sudden change?" She said, "Because even if intellectually there is no difference between the American police of 2024 and the Nazi police of 1934, I still feel a difference. They are fellow countrymen." Winston snorted. "Tribal collectivism? You? Really?" But when Julia just hung her head down, a bit embarrassed, Winston was instantly regretful. "I get it, dear", he said. "I do. I shouldn't dismiss it so easy. And after all, on some level, you and I are still in the system, as much as we forget that. To others, we're the ones who need to be killed!"
Julia removed her legs from his, sat up and then cuddled next to him, holding him close. "Don't speak of this kind of thing ever again, dear, but let us simply quit now, move to the Midwest and get ordinary boring jobs, live in a boring house and raise boring kids! It will last our time, and what more can any ask for? Truly, this is not our fight. I'm sorry for how terrible it is for the others, but it's always terrible for the others! When is it ever not terrible for the others, in all history? It's still not our fight, it's not, it's not!"
"Oh, my dear," Winston said, "I want nothing more than to grow old with you, but who are we, really? We each have a fire inside us, and even if you can quench yours, I can't quench mine! I've thought that I could, but then meeting you showed me that there are others who think as I do, I'm not alone, I'm not as out of the loop as I had convinced myself! Don't you see, it's for you that I wish to fight, at least a bit, so that when I'm old - when we're old - we can look back and know that even if we eventually sold out, we did some small bit for freedom, struck some blow!"
Julia buried her face between his neck and shoulder, and said, "Yes, dear, okay, if it means we settle down afterward, then yes, I will agree we can fight a bit, but how dear, how?" But Winston was more excited about her agreement to spend a lifetime with him and thus the evening devolved into an all night "liberation" that seemed to cement their lives and their causes together forever.
7.
"If they'd ever just ignore us, the administration would collapse in two weeks." opined Symes at the cafe a week later. Winston looked up from his salad but before he could say a word, Parsons grunted, "What's that you say? Who ignore us?" and Winston pretended not to be interested in the answer. "The masses", Symes continued. "In any age, they never need to revolt, they only need to ignore us. Millions already entirely evade taxes by various forms of 'Going Galt', and I'm not just talking the rich. And who cooperates with the police any more, or trusts the courts? Yet while it's still under 25%, and the rest aren't aware, we can still coast along."
Symes was too smart for his own good, Winston thought, for all that Symes clearly was a system man. But it wasn't a great way of being a system man, to make sure to let everyone know that you saw through the ruse. The ruse, in a very real sense, kept it all functioning. If people - even those doing the oppressing - could not feel they were on the side of angels, then the very thing he had spoke of could really take place. You could have waves of work slow-downs, sabotage and strikes. Or just the general "failure to participate" that kept government statisticians worried about the low voter turn outs.
It was funny how it required everyone to be lying all the time, to themselves and everyone else. A whole nation, and he guessed a whole world, of everyone lying. Each claiming to know that their nation was free and good and decent and just. Each calling for every other nation to be held to account for the very vileness that was justified in their own nation of birth. They hung Saddam for torture, having tortured many to find him. They killed Osama outside the law, for he had killed so many outside the law.
Parsons, not the keenest, but one who at least knew he was not, was looking at Symes in admiration. "What a brain, eh, Winston?" Parsons rhetorically asked. "But it's okay, the Bureau will see to things no matter what administration is in power." Symes only shook his head at that, and said, "No administration is ever 'in power', they just distract from the real policy makers behind the scenes. And before you ask, it's those who pay them, and no, I don't mean the taxpayers. The donors, the ones who are paying voluntarily. Who else? If you want to know who really runs a nation, look at who pays to control those who administer it!"
Yes, Winston, thought, Symes was surely not one who was going to see his tenth year here, let alone his twentieth. And if he wasn't careful, he probably wouldn't see his fifth. Perhaps a State Bureau of Investigation would be more suitable for him. Say, in Nebraska. But meanwhile, he managed to nod to Parsons and make it seem to Symes as if the nod could have been for him, all while not agreeing to or committing to anything. "Above my paygrade", he muttered amiably, and took that as a great opportunity to exit.
Winston had gave much thought to "revolution", especially now that Julia was on board. But one thing he knew, he could not trust anyone. Which meant that there was no thought of joining a larger movement. All such were of the State, all history showed that. And if not out right of the State, then the probability of at least one informer being in any group was 100%.
He was well aware of the old story about how when the FBI tried to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. They did so with a campaign of planting agents, bribing various members/leaders, and getting dirt on still other leaders to blackmail them or threaten them with prison. Till one day they collated all the data and realized that they were in complete control of the KKK!
No, any revolutionary in modern times had to act alone, or at least in a very small cell. And even cells had dangers. What was the old Hells Angel's saying? Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead? Wise words. And in fact, there were books wrote specifically on how if one was going to resist, they should go it alone. He had read, at Julia's insistence, both "The Turner Diaries" and "Hunter". And she was right. Disgustingly racist, but excellent fictional renditions of how one man could make a difference, and then, with a nation preliminarily destabilized, how it might be safe to have a more organized revolutionary group.
That afternoon, he met Julia in a park, and they assumed it was safe to walk and discuss their ideas. And they were correct, unlike some dystopic fiction, it was hard to have a microphone or bug in every tree and bush. If they had acted suspiciously and done things to bring attention to themselves, it was conceivable that a directional microphone could be aimed at them, but none of them had departed from their routines in the least.
"But why must the leap always be to death, dear?", asked Julia. "The term 'sabotage' comes from peasants throwing a shoe - a 'sabot' - into the machinery, thus giving themselves a day's rest! Can we not strike blows against the system without loss of life?" Winston gave her hand a squeeze, so she'd know he heard and was merely gathering his thoughts. "Dear", he replied, "There are pros and cons to that. The pro is that ordinarily, anything less than death doesn't get the system to bring the heavy guns to bear - no burglaries see DNA used to solve them, not unless it was a very, very wealthy man robbed. However, if it smacks of terrorism or as you put it, 'sabotage', that still gets looked at immediately."
"What's the con then?", Julia asked. Winston said, "Still on the pros, if it's done very randomly, and planned very well, then even if they suspect that a series of incidents is part of a greater plan, they won't be sure, and won't be able to act very well against it. Three or four incidents might be done in three or four different towns, even before the first analyst started to flag it. But the con? Well, slashed tires at the IRS parking lot one day, and graffiti on a courthouse another time, and Karo syrup in the tanks of police cars yet another time, are basically a lot of risk for very little gain in return. It's sabotage, you can probably - if you're careful - get away with it, but..."
Julia contemplated this and said, "Too small to really matter? Yeah, I can see that. So while almost anything might get their attention at some point, the bigger it is, the more of a point it makes?" Winston nodded. "Yes, which means that assassination gives most revolutionary groups the most bang for their buck." He could tell from her unchanging expression that she didn't much like that. She confirmed this by saying, "I disagree. Assassination deals with either the lower level employees and agents of the state, who in a large part are meaningless and interchangeable, or the top ones, who are ordinarily inaccessible to we regular folks."
Winston nodded, in half agreement. "Those at the top, I think they get focused on too much. Especially as they aren't the real leaders anyway. Kill a Congressman, and another takes his place. Frankly, I'm surprised that more of the wealthy donors don't get assassinated, but they keep a pretty low profile. Congressmen might be at a public park for a rally, but you'll never see the billionaire who backs and controls him there." Julia asked, "So you'd rather focus on those on the bottom? But aren't they easily replaceable, too?"
Winston said. "Yes, cops, bureaucrats, and such, they are easily replaceable...but they are also far less guarded. They get a lot of applicants for those jobs now, but what if those jobs became dangerous to work at? Wouldn't less apply?" Julia shook her head. "No, dear, I mean your point is valid, but for one, there'd have to be an awful lot of cops or bureaucrats killed over a long time for that to register in the public's consciousness, and for two, there'd still be applicants, just dumber ones....oh!"
She looked at him admiringly. "Yes, I can see how that would be a benefit, but only in a long term and fully organized revolution! Dear, it's just the two of us!" He looked sad. "You're right. And we seem to be back to square one. Nothing we do is likely to make any difference in striking a blow against the system. But I'm still leery of doing nothing!"
"Wait!", Julia exclaimed. "I think I've got it!"
8.
They were at the Charrington Inn, a seedy little no-tell Motel a few miles from D.C. proper. Winston had found this place, and they often met here as a lark, and for in case either of their places were being monitored. Since they had started actively discussing Julia's idea about how to strike a blow, they were trying to take more precautions. Though as Julia insisted, it was really Winston's idea, she just gave him the words. He was glad to take the credit, but knew that he'd not have come up with it save her timely comment.
"What if we blew up cop cars?" she had said back when they had been discussing what could make the largest impression for the least risk of being caught. And it was a good idea, Winston thought for the dozenth time. A great idea. It was flashy, it would definitely get attention, but with no death involved, there could be a delay before the big investigative guns were brought to bear. And it was moral - no loss of life, even among the low level "Nazi camp guards" who so unquestioningly served those above them.
It was the morning after, and Winston was outside the open door of their room, at the railing of the second floor, looking down. Sitting by the dirty looking pool in a lawn chair, wearing only a bikini, when a tent would have been more appropriate, was some random tourist woman, probably the mother of the two brats splashing about in the over-chlorinated water. She had on headphones and was swaying back and forth, her singing reaching up to Winston.
"Oh, oh, oh, get in the action, feel the attraction
Color my hair, do what I dare
Oh, oh, oh, I want to be free yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man! I feel like a woman!"
Julia joined him at the rail. "She's hideous!", she murmured, watching with him as the fat woman got up and started dancing a bit. "She's wonderful!", said Winston. At Julia's inquiring look he said, "She's what keeps it all going. So long as the powers that be keep her happy, there'll never be a revolution. She has her Doritos, her music, her fridge, her internet - what does she care about the finer points of political philosophy?"
"She a yard across the hips, easy.", Julia replied and grabbed his hand and drug Winston back in. "Now, let's get serious, are we doing this or what?"
Winston marveled at the change in her. Maybe it was because they had settled on a plan that involved no loss of life, since after all, neither of them were real killers. But whatever the reason, she was gung ho for this bombing mission now. Winston had advocated that they K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and just use gasoline bombs with styrofoam dissolved in them. Gasoline with styrofoam dissolved in it made it napalm. Putting it in glass bottles made it "Molotov Cocktails".
Julia had opposed this.
"Dear, that is easily made, true. And more damaging then some think. But what is it going to do besides muss the paint on the car? It won't explode the gas tank, that's just Hollywood movie making silliness. Each of those movie cars is loaded up with explosives, if cars really exploded as easily as in those movies, then every auto accident would be an inferno!"
"Still", Winston said, "the napalm is 'sticky' and will run down under the hood. And you know the state, they won't want to 'repair' they'll want to replace. And the officer will still be demoralized." Julia shook her head. "Listen, dear, and don't be mad, but I've built something, and I want you to take a look at it, tell me what you think." She nodded her head over to the brightly wrapped gift box that Winston had asked about last night, and had been told only to "Wait and see!".
She made sure the door was locked, then the curtains pulled all the way closed, then waved him into the chair. She picked up the box and put it on the table near him, and lifted up the lid. It came off easily, the ribbons weren't truly tying it together. Winston peered inside, though suspecting a little already. Sure enough, four pipe bombs were in there, all in a row, and then a small box with wires from it that were connected to the pipes.
"How...how?", Winston stammered as Julia beamed with pride. "Youtube videos, dear!", she explained. "PVC tubes, cut to size with a hacksaw, smokeless powder from another store, caps with a hole drilled in and then glued on the end, I was very careful! That box has batteries and can give off a charge, but only if the remote is pushed." Gingerly, she removed a remote from her jacket that was hanging near the door and showed it to him. He automatically reached out his hand for it.
"Careful, dear. It is live.", Julia said. Winston laid it down near the table carefully, then looked up at her. "I don't know what to say." "Oh, Winston - say you're proud of me, and that we can finally move on our plans!" He nodded dully, unsure and with his mind spinning in doubt and wonder and a little fear at how this was becoming so real. "No, dear, don't just nod, say it!" Winston said dully, "I am proud of you, and yes, we can move on with our plans."
"The cop car that always gets parked on 5th and Elm?", Julia pressed. "Yes", said Winston, "Just give me a minute. We'd still just been talking and now, the reality of it, it's just all so sudden. We're terrorists now."
"We're terrorists now.", Julia dutifully repeated.
"You are terrorists now.", said a voice from behind the mirror. Winston had no time to process that as with two loud thumps at the door, the door flew in, and a flash bang grenade was tossed in while someone screamed, "Federal Warrant!". The shock knocked him over in his chair, the room filled with smoke and black clad men. "DOWN, DOWN, DOWN!" was being screamed by what sounded like dozens of men, voices muffled by masks. A knee was being ground into Winston's back as he choked and retched.
A bag was placed over his head, he was lifted up by his handcuffed wrists, and being hustled out. He had just time to yell, "Don't hurt her!", and was being drug down the steps into a waiting black vehicle.
9.
Winston sat in the general holding area of the jail, trying to be small and inconspicuous. Criminals all around him were talking loudly and swapping stories and jokes. He was still trying to process it all. None of his questions had been answered, and when he asked the person fingerprinting him for a phone call, she shook her head and said that she wasn't the person to ask. There was a pay phone in this holding cell, but without his cell phone, he did not know the numbers of anyone.
And the only person he'd have cared to call was Julia. And presumably she was in a women's holding area somewhere. How foolish he had been to let her get involved in this. His mind raced with stories of what happened to those arrested on charges of terrorism. Waterboardings, indefinite detentions, other forms of "enhanced interrogation". And rape. Or dogs snapping at your testicles. Or even just the lonely terror of solitary driving you mad.
A guard would come periodically, to call out someone's name, that person could then leave. In some cases, because they were being bailed out. Other times, they were being took to their assigned wing, where they'd await whatever hearing they had next. There were no windows. The fluorescent light was constant. Already Winston could not have said what time it was, and it could even be the afternoon by now. In truth, travel time, processing time and his long wait, had added up more than he knew, it was 6:30 in the evening, nine hours after his arrest.
"Smith! 6071 Smith, Winston!" yelled the guard, using the last four of his Social Security number as a part of his ID. Not that Winston thought there was much chance of there being two Winston Smiths in here, but the bureaucratic mind was nothing if not inflexibly tedious about procedures. He stumbled to his feet, the knot in his stomach growing. It's starting, he thought. It's starting.
He was took to a door that read "Interview Room 101", and sat down in a chair and handcuffed to a ring on the lone table. A camera in the corner looked down at him. Another chair was across from him. One wall had a mirror that he knew to be one way glass. Ten minutes later - time for him to get good and frazzled with anticipation - a man in a cheap suit walked in with a cup of coffee and a folder, looking distracted.
Ignoring Winston, he sat down, set the coffee down, and started looking through the file. He glanced up at Winston. "Want some coffee?", he asked, to which Winston dazedly shook his head "no". The man grunted and looked back down at the file. Finally he looked up and looked over Winston. He didn't seem to like what he saw.
"I'm going to read you your rights now. And then you're going to sign off that I've read them to you. Do you understand?", the man said. Winston just stared. The man shoved the table into Winston's stomach, and leaped up. "DO YOU?!", the man screamed. Winston shrank back involuntarily, terrified and said, "Yes, yes, sorry."
The man calmed down at once, and went over the Miranda rights that every one who had ever watched TV knew of. He opened up his file of papers, and one of them was a list of those rights - to silence, counsel and such - and Winston dutifully initialed each one and then signed at the bottom. "Good", the man grunted. "Now, what do you want to say?"
"I'd like to have my lawyer now, please.", Winston said timidly. Instantly the man's face got angry looking. Then he lisped in a high falsetto, "I'd like to have my lawyer now, please, I'd like to have my lawyer now, please!" Winston flushed. "You weaselly little pussy.", the man started, "You got all the guts in the world for blowing shit up and playing your terrorist games, but when it hits the fan, you want a lawyer! No courage of your convictions? No pride in what you did?"
Winston, his head hung down, looked up at that last sentence and said, semi-defiantly, "We didn't do anything!"
The man looked at him a few seconds, almost in wonder. He shook his head from side to side. "Didn't do anything?", the man asked rhetorically. "Didn't do anything? You dumb ass, we've got you on about two dozen charges pertaining to terrorism, attempted murder, conspiracy, possession of explosives, public endangerment, breaking various articles of the Espionage Act, violations of the Patriot Act, and while I'd have to check, probably jaywalking, too! You'd need three lawyers in here just to figure out all the different things the DA can - and no doubt will - charge you with!"
"But", the man continued, "No matter how bad things get, it's never so bad that a bit of cooperation can't make it a bit more comfortable. We've already got you cold. Don't even really need anything from you. For all I know, your girlfriend is cutting a deal now. I don't care. Still, I got to at least let you have a chance to confess and cooperate, even if it galls me to have to do anything nice for a piece of crap like you. Hell, I hope you insist on a lawyer. I'd be happy as a clam to let the system grind you up."
Winston was sick with fear and distress and confusion. He knew that Julia would never betray him, so no worries there. But what this - detective? What this detective was saying was probably true, they no doubt had enough on he and Julia to send them up for a long, long time. They somehow were on to us, he thought. They must have tracked her, recorded her purchases. Or maybe they just had the motel bugged.
"I know you think she won't talk", his interviewer said, interrupting Winston's reverie. "But she will. They all do. You will, too. You know why?" Winston didn't answer. The interviewer didn't seem to mind. "Because you're each facing 25 years, minimum, in a Supermax. You know we have the explosives, and in the room registered in your name. Internalize that. You're facing what will be for all intents and purposes, life in prison. At least all the part of life that matters."
"And", he continued, "they really are the hell you two have been whining about. The guards spit in the food, and the food is none too good to start with. You'll eat that literal slop only when you're starving - and you'll throw it up for awhile anyway. But that will be the least of it. Hour after hour, in the small bare cell, and trust me, champ, it is 'the place where there is no darkness'. It'll be fully lit, 24/7, for you to count the cinderblocks. And when you've been there for months and months, and wondering how you'll last for years and years, then you'll find out that's it's only been a few weeks - and you with not years, but decades left to go."
Winston shivered. The interviewer nodded knowingly. "It's eternity in there, boy. And no one on the outside will care. No one likes cop killers." Winston roused himself and started, "But we didn't...we weren't...." and the interviewer instantly leaned in to within an inch of Winston's face and roared back, "BULLSHIT!!" He continued in a softer, but still menacing voice. "Do you have any idea how many of you goof up on the timing of those bombs?" Before Winston could answer, this large man went back to his high-pitched mocking tone, "Ohhhh, we thought the building was empty, how were we to know a janitor would clean after hours!? We're just kids, we didn't mean no harm when we wired the whole building!"
He moved back away and appraised Winston calmly for a thirty seconds. Winston got uncomfortable. Winston leaned his head down to his hands and furtively wiped some of the man's spittle off of his face. Had there been a question to answer? Had he been about to say something? He was disoriented, confused. The interviewer then said, "She's going to talk. And you're going to talk. Because we've got you dead to rights, and without any cooperation from you or her, then we may as well just throw you both away and lose the key. You know this. I know this. She knows this. Any dumbass lawyer who's fee the state would be paying knows this. Talk now, and talk good, and if we like it, then maybe you can get out in something less than a quarter of a century!"
10.
Seven hours later, Winston was dazedly marveling about how long this man could talk. He seemed to have a knack for repeating things in many different ways, in an odd circular pattern. And every few go arounds, oft times based on something Winston inadvertently admitted or denied, the man would toss in something new. It was like being hit from a new angle, and you never knew where the next blow was going to land. Winston nervously drank some more of the water that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, some indeterminate time ago.
Winston couldn't just tune him out, though he wanted to, or the man would get mad. Winston wasn't sure what all the man's limits were, but knew he did not want to find out. Other times, Winston would have to speak back, not just so the man wouldn't get mad, but so the man would not use Winston's silence as proof of guilt. The man liked to describe terrible crimes and motives, then if Winston didn't respond, start marking down in his file like it meant Winston was not denying it, and thus tacitly admitting it.
Winston, for all his studying of how bad the system was, did not know that very few police interrogations used out and out physical violence. Shovings and shakings, at the most, and even that very rare. It had been learned that simple sleep deprivation, mental/emotional abuse, the vague threat of force, and most of all, the threat of an overwhelming decades long prison sentence, were all the tools needed to break any who needed breaking.
That and using the suspect's love for another against him.
"You still want to out stubborn us? Still too dumb to own up? Still think you can do 25, no sweat? But hey, even if you do think you're tough enough for 25, what of her? You forget about her? Or does she mean nothing to you? Just a random lay?"
Winston looked up, emotionally punch drunk, but with a bit of hope flaring. "You mean", Winston said, "That if I talk, you could give her consideration?" The man nodded and said, "You listen up, I'm going to be totally straight with you. As you've no doubt seen on 'Law and Order' or some other dumb cop show, I can't make any solid promises. I won't pretend to. But I know how the system works. The DA doesn't like to work, he doesn't like to break a sweat. You make this easy on him, he won't be going for blood. It's as simple as that."
Winston, who was unaware that it was 1:30 in the morning, or almost 16 hours since he and Julia had been in the motel room, nodded, thinking - as well as he could think - that what the interviewer said made sense. And hell, he thought resignedly, they did have them. They never acted unless they did. And even if they didn't have evidence, that never stopped them. Winston nodded again, and the interviewer, intimately familiar with this process, knew that this second nod was a nod of surrender.
As if by magic, the papers already filled out, already describing what the police knew and/or wanted to know, were in front of Winston to sign. He signed them, the camera duly recording that he did so voluntarily, and another man popped in to sign off as a witness. And his interviewer also signed off as a witness - Detective O'Brien, Winston saw. That one "confession" out of the way - and not really meaning as much as Winston thought - he was given a brief interview in which very leading questions were asked of him, and he answered "yes" to each, all the while the camera recording.
Then, the final part of it, he was gave a pen and a yellow legal pad, and asked to tell the story in his "own words". A lawyer could have advised him that this would be the most damning of all these "confessions", the previous two confessions mainly just there to get him thinking that this was all over and done with, that he'd "already" confessed. Experience had taught the police that a man might change his mind halfway through a hand written confession otherwise. If for no other reason than his hand getting tired.
When it was done, Winston felt exhausted.
11.
At 2:30 in the morning, when Winston was just starting to wonder again what time it was, and what would come next, O'Brien stormed back in, kicked over the empty chair and started yelling at Winston. "What kind of crap is this? I showed this to my boss, I hadn't even read it, I trusted you, and it's for crap! Well, play time is over, I'm done trying to save your sorry ass!" Winston shrank back in his chair, and could only sputter helplessly, "What...what...? I don't understand!"
"You utter coward", O'Brien said. "Putting it all on that poor girl? So it was all her idea about bombing and she made all the bombs, eh? I've half a mind to just go and find what room she's in and show her this crap! Let her see what a cowardly piece of shit she got herself involved with!"
Winston shivered. Had he put it that way? He hadn't thought so, but maybe it could be interpreted that way... He tentatively reached out for the confession, to see if he'd really put it that way, sure that he couldn't have, but O'Brien yanked it away, out of reach. "Oh no you don't. This is either true or false, and if it's true, she's seeing it. If it's false, say so now, and if you can persuade me you're not going to play any more games, I might tear this one up!"
Winston wet himself, and hardly noticed. O'Brien did, but said nothing. It was usual for "extended" interviews. And though Winston had declined the originally offered coffee, he had drank from the bottled water that O'Brien made sure kept appearing near him. And unbeknownst to Winston, the water was strongly caffeinated. With all the fatigue poisons in the world cluttering Winston's thinking, he was still groggily wired.
"No, no, this was not on Julia. Let me do another one!", Winston begged. O'Brien said, "I'm going to turn that camera back on, and I'm going to ask you some questions, if I like the answers, I'll let you write another confession, you with me?" Winston nodded eagerly, "Yes, yes, sure!"
O'Brien made a hand motion, presumably for someone in another room to turn the camera on, and then asked, "Who's idea was it to bomb policemen in their police cars?" Winston looked surprised and about to deny that, when O'Brien said, "Tell me the truth, or I'm ending this now, and going with what we have!"
Did that mean they'd charge Julia with trying to kill cops? But we only meant to blow up the cop cars! I can't let her face having this land on her, I've got to do the right thing, Winston thought. He gathered himself up as well as he could and said clearly, "It was my idea. Julia did not want to do this. I did it, and I take full responsibility for it." He thought he'd done well, but O'Brien frowned and said, "What was your idea, and what do you take full responsibility for?"
Winston said, "I take full responsibility for the plan to blow up policemen in their cars. Julia had nothing to do with it." O'Brien said, with the camera still on, "You mean that she had nothing to do with the part where policemen would be in the cars? That she just thought that you'd be blowing up empty cars?" Winston, seeing this as an out, and not wishing any more of this, nodded eagerly. "Yes", he said, "That's what I mean."
"And you made the bombs?", O'Brien asked, almost gently. "Yes, yes", said Winston. "That was all me. I made the bombs." O'Brien nodded approvingly. "And this whole 'get back at the government thing', do you feel that Julia led you to this, or encouraged you in any way to this, or had anything to do with radicalizing you?" "No, no, of course not!", Winston said, "She's a good and gentle woman, look, please, this is all just on me!"
O'Brien made another hand motion. Perhaps then the cameras went off, or perhaps they always ran continuously to just be edited later. In almost seconds, a non-descript man hustled in with a transcript of what had just been asked and answered, and they had Winston sign it. When he had, another man came in, with a story typed out with those details in it, and they had Winston sign that.
Then they left him in that room, and went to get it all filed. Another case closed.
12.
An hour later, and while he was still jittery, he had started to nod off. He was in mid head droop when he was rudely shook, not by O'Brien, but by two Federal Marshals. They ignored his questions and just barked orders pertaining to him getting up, his hands cuffed in front of him and manacles put on his ankles. They took him to a van idling outside that was plain and white. There were windows, though. They sat him in the middle row, and one of the men got into the back row, the other in the front row. The driver waited for the side door to close then took off.
Winston was still sleepy, but oddly still not. It was the massive amount of caffeine still in his system, and the whole terrible experience of having his mind and will broke in what could sound to the layman like a pretty short time, but was long enough to do that to a much higher percent of people than the public would be comfortable in knowing.
He started to try to ask about where he was going, but the man behind him said, "Shut the fuck up." Winston did so. Funny how the only time he ever heard swear words in his life was on TV or from these law enforcement agents. They drove towards DC, and without fanfare, the one behind him put a bag over his head. Winston didn't even bother complaining, but instead took the opportunity to close his eyes and try to doze off.
As his head would droop, though, one of the men would poke him in the ribs, painfully, and order him awake. An indeterminate time later, they pulled into an underground garage, and Winston was hustled off into a building used by Homeland Security, ICE, ATF and various other agencies. There he was put in a room much like the interview room he had come from. His hood was removed.
A small and boring looking man was seated across from him. Without preamble he said, "You've already confessed, we've got that by video, by signed statement and wrote out in your own handwriting. Now we just need to know who the others are."
Winston looked blank. The small man took off his glasses, rubbed his nose with his forefinger and thumb, put the glasses back on and said, "Don't play games, we know that you two could not have been in it alone, we need to know who helped with the bomb making, who your confederates were, who you took orders from, who you gave orders to."
Winston had no names, a fact that the small man already knew. But after three more sleepless hours, Winston had gave the names of everyone that he thought might in anyway have thoughts about overthrowing the government or striking a blow against the system, or even who was just generally discontent. He reached back as far as a kid he knew in 3rd grade, and as recently as Symes from lunch. He even told himself that mentioning Symes was just to throw them off the scent, but he knew he was lying to himself now.
He gave those names because they told him he'd not get "the deal", whatever that was to be, if he did not. And that Julia would not get that same undescribed deal. Was he doing it more for her? More for him? Both? He was dying for lack of sleep, and knew not. Finally the small man was done with him, and exited the room. Another man came and got Winston, and ignoring Winston's queries, took him to a plain cell with a gym mat for a bed. He locked the door behind Winston, had Winston stick his hands through a slot, and took the handcuffs off.
Winston thought to ask about the manacles, but instead just collapsed on the mat and fell asleep.
13.
Winston sat at the Chestnut Tree Cafe, in Pocatello, Idaho, idly sipping at his Grande Americano. It was three years later, and he had healed, a couple of years back, kind of. In a way. But not really, not fully. It was more just that he had learned to live with what had happened. If he were to describe his symptoms to a psychologist or psychiatrist, and attribute what had been done to him to an overseas terrorist group, he would be - correctly - diagnosed as having PTSD due to the massive traumas gave to him.
When he had awoke in that bare cell 36 months ago, they had took him to an elevator and up to - a floor of FBI offices where his immediate supervisor and his boss both worked! They had dropped him off in the well-familiar conference room, and his supervisor and boss were already sitting there. They had not looked surprised to see him.
They had explained Winston's new life to him. He would accept a plea to a variety of terroristic acts, for which he would be sentenced to 35 years in prison - suspended. He'd also be on 35 years of probation. If he failed to cooperate with any Federal authorities in the discovering of terror cells, terror groups, and/or terrorists, he would have to serve all that time. Which was their way of letting him know that he would be a paid informant for the rest of his life.
Making friends in order to then betray them would be his job. Making friends with the disenfranchised and disenchanted, so to then report on them. And more so, to get them to commit some overt act for which they could be arrested. Pocatello would be ideal for him flushing out Fundamentalist Mormons, Aryan Nation radicals and the various "Patriot" groups that insisted on taking the Constitution seriously. And there were always other cities. His life was theirs now.
Everything Winston had stood for, he had then learned that he'd be betraying. Forever. And thus making it possible for others to get roped in and then blackmailed into betraying yet more people. He had contemplated suicide at the time. As if they had known that, they had told him that he was free to kill himself, they could care less. But if he botched it, it would be prison at once. He had contemplated fighting it, in court, in the press.
They played the tape of him admitting to it all. They also told him that if he really wanted to play hardball, they could check to see if his computer had 7,421 files of child porn on it. They asked him if he knew how they could know the number so exactly. He had understood.
He had asked if Julia could come with him, or at least be set free, or at the very least gave some modest sentence that would allow her to have a normal life at some point. His boss and boss's boss had looked at each other, and then him, almost in - pity? His supervisor started to hem and haw, but the District Manager had cut in with, "He may as well know now.", and motioned to someone outside the conference room. At once the door opened, and in walked -
- "Julia!", Winston had exclaimed, rising to his feet. "Are you okay?" She had looked at him, not coldly, but not gladly. Very neutral. She had said in a calm and emotionless voice, "I'm already the type of employee that you now will be. They got me two years ago. I've been working for them undercover ever since. If you are wondering, I'm not sorry. Because honestly, I've come to learn since doing what I had done that we were each very stupid for trying to do such harmful and destructive things. It's best I was caught. It's best you were caught. One day you'll get that. I had to grow up. Now you have to."
And with that she had left the room and Winston's life forever. As they had assured him, he hadn't even known her real name. He had been sick with loss and grief and betrayal. They'd have had nothing on him if he had not tried to protect her. It was pure entrapment, but there was nothing he could do about it, and no one who would have cared had he been dumb enough to complain.
Eventually he had gone to their training classes, learned the art of being a traitor to everyone he'd ever be meeting in the future. Six months of that had helped, a bit. Then he'd been moved to Billings, Montana, just for some practice runs to see if he could handle himself. Another six months. Then he had been moved to this forsaken part of the nation two years ago. This cafe was where he always went, when he needed a "face to face" with his handler, an older man who was in this voluntarily, but treated Winston like a brother in arms.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me." was a verse that flickered through Winston's mind while he waited for his handler to arrive. He had read it in a book that had once been very important to him, as a description of everything he hated about oppression, but now was just another part of his life best forgot.
The television seemed to get a bit louder, there was some breaking news. Winston suspected it might be news pertaining to some of the details he'd been giving to his handler already. Sure enough, there had been a dawn raid on a polygamist compound, and 22 arrests had been made, and 62 children took into custody by Child Protective Services! The newscaster was very excited and was going on about how this was the largest mass arrest of such types since 1984!
Interviewing the FBI agent on scene, that agent revealed that this was the bust they had been waiting for, and that it was possible now with the files they had also seized that this breakaway sect of Mormonism, numbering several thousand members nationwide, could now be dissolved as a legal entity under the RICO laws, assets seized, other members arrested, other children placed in normal homes where they'd grow up with public schools, not religious indoctrination!
Winston saw his handler enter, and he hurriedly brushed away a tear. He had come to be proud of the work that he did, and it was work no matter what some foolish idealists might think of it. He had took real risks to get information on those files! True, these polygamists had not been marrying child brides, like they had initially thought, but polygamy, even among consenting adults, was still a crime, wasn't it?
Winston had come to learn that breaking the laws of the land, fighting the system, plotting plots, spreading fear, were terrible things, justified by no ethereal and largely meaningless words like "freedom" or "rights".
You voted or lobbied or shut up and paid your taxes. You did not resist with violence. You did not try to withdraw from society. Never. You lived life as best you could. Another bit of moistness started to fill Winston's eye, and he hurriedly daubed that away. You didn't have to love the government, or anyone in it. You just had to accept it. You just had to behave.
Winston had been faced with regarding himself as a piece of crap traitor who tricked others for a living - or to regard himself as a man who had learned his lesson, put his youthful folly behind him, and now did good and decent work. He'd had a bit over two years to put the obvious choice he'd made into practice. It was well internalized now. Well, as much as it could be.
This was still the greatest nation on Earth he reminded himself, almost desperately. With all it's faults, still better than Cuba or North Korea, right? What was "freedom", anyway, could anyone name anything that they couldn't do - well, except stuff that was harmful to themselves or others? None of those rabble rousers, that he was embarrassed now that he had once been, had any common sense. You needed laws, you needed order.
As his handler sat down, Winston realized that he had won the victory against himself.
He loved America.
