By the LA Docks

I finally made it outside! Another beautiful night on the LA docks; warm with just a hint of a cool breeze and the smell of the ocean. It’s something that I’ve always loved, ever since I was a little kid: romance and adventure and endless opportunity, all wrapped up in each and every puff of wind, lap of the waves, and glimpse of the horizon. There’s a silver-lining to these forced moves: Our last HQ and Scene were in a burned-out section of Compton, and I have to say it was pretty dismal. I mean, we’re always in one abandoned, burned-out, or boarded up section of town or another, but that last spot was grimmer than most. It was almost like you could still feel the presence of all those poor people — of our black brothers and sisters — and as I think back, as bad as it’s been for us, it was a hundred times worse for them. When that hammer finally fell, there barely was even a discussion; none of the intense public conversations; none of the agonized soul-searching that occurred when they decided to crack down on the kids. One day there were black people and the next day there weren’t. No one asked what happened to them, and given that every last bit of black culture has been banned — no more Rap music or funk, no more soul-food restaurants, no more black fashions — it’s like they never existed.

No guards out here. No visible presence. When our patrols go out, they do it under STEALTH, and even the Scene spots, HQ, and our residential blocks are covered by it. If you looked at them from the outside, you’d never know they were there. The interior of every location is set up so that there’s a ring of unused, unlit, unpowered rooms around a central core, where we live and work and play. Every room, every closet, every toilet is under a blanket of scrambler-signals. But, it’s not enough for us to be invisible to your computer networks, satellites, and electronic surveillance. We need to be invisible to foot and vehicle traffic too — to helicopters and drones with heat-sensing scanners — to anything and everything you might throw at us. So, a dead building will look like a dead building from the outside, even though inside it’s full of life. You could even walk in the front door and it would still seem like a dead building. But if you came through the second door? It’d be you who’d be dead.

There are a lot of derelict buildings in LA and probably everywhere else in the US too. I guess that’s another silver lining to having an enemy as sick and depraved as you are. It means that you make a lot of really bad calls. Every day seems like a new opportunity for you to shoot yourself in the foot. Every week, another section of town is abandoned and boarded up, as the country sinks under your miserable leadership. I mean, the only reason we were able to set up here, in docklands, is because it’s fucking abandoned. And why is the largest port in the country abandoned? Because no one will trade with us anymore: not the French; not the Germans; not the Brits; no one.

You didn’t actually believe all that crap they told you, did you? That we don’t trade with anyone anymore on purpose? That it’s all about “Economic Independence and Security” and “Bringing Jobs Back Home?” That the reason why it’s impossible to get a visa to go anywhere, other than a handful of shitty dictatorships, is because we “Refuse to compromise with people who don’t share our values?” Shit, maybe you did believe it.  Weirder things, right?

Gotta’ check in with HQ, before I move on to the next block. I just sent them a signal, and any second they should confirm that the street’s clear. I really don’t want to run into any cops tonight. I mean, I can handle myself, but since I’m dressed up for my date, I’m only carrying my little Derringer — the tiny, four-barreled, gold-plated pistol that Bobby gave me for my birthday last year — and it’s so small that it fits into the palm of my hand.  Anyway, I’ve got it strapped to the garter on my left leg, which means that it shows just enough under my cocktail dress to give everybody a hot little flash of gold against my skin — and I have to admit, my legs are killer — but it also means that I’m not exactly geared for real combat.

Bobby told me he got the Derringer from Gwen, who’d swiped it from the purse of some closeted, lesbian Assistant District Attorney she’d just finished fucking and who’d fallen asleep. It’s a great secret weapon — a last resort if someone gets too close — but it’s hardly something I could get into a gunfight with, and it won’t pierce even the weakest body-armor. I need to make sure I’m not seen on my way to meet Bobby, or I’ll go down the way the last Claire Standish did; if they even bother to take me alive.

Just got the all-clear. Two more blocks and Bobby should be waiting at an abandoned bus depot. The nights are strange all around the Overground, now. The Curfew may only be for kids and teens, but the result has been deserted nighttime streets. Other than a few of the downtown areas, where there’s a heavy concentration of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, which cater to the adults who live in the urban parts of town, the rest of LA is completely desolate at night. And it kinda’ makes sense. I can remember back before all this started — before Pike’s gang took over the Capitol — and even then the suburban streets were basically empty at night, except for the teens. I mean, that’s always been the American Dream, right? To live in a cookie-cutter house in the suburbs and work and commute and go to bed by nine o’clock and never see anyone? Any stores or restaurants or clubs that were in the suburbs and open at night had an almost exclusively young clientele, so once there weren’t any young people out any more after dark, they all closed. The only ones on the streets at night now are cops enforcing the Curfew and the surveillance robots and drones that they bring with them.

And then there’s Bobby. Every time I see him, I remember the first time — the time I told you about earlier — when First Squad broke the Refuseniks out of the LA County Boys’ Center in the Valley — what used to be PS242. Bobby was one of them. He was fifteen, tall, with light brown hair and baby blue eyes and the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen.

We’d had our eye on the place for quite a while and then, on one lucky day, an Infiltrator got hold of a district-wide janitorial IDENT card, which meant that we could access the building through the delivery and trash chutes without tripping the alarms. 

‘Refuseniks’ are what they call kids and teens who resist the Culling and Curfew, but who haven’t found their way to the Rebellion. They’re rounded up and placed in Boys’ and Girls’ “Centers,” where they’re boarded and “worked with,” which means that they’re subjected to brutal brainwashing and conditioning. We’d heard about these places but had never found the opportunity to bust into one, so PS242 was the first. The G-Boys had gotten us the architectural blueprints for the place, as well as a sense of how many guards there were and how they were distributed, so we came in well-prepared and with the element of surprise.

I’d broken the squad into five teams of three and we’d picked five different spots from which to enter, and if you can forget the ugliness of it all, it was a beautiful operation.  Simultaneously, all five groups burst out of delivery hatches and garbage chutes throughout the facility and jumped the guards who were so surprised that they barely resisted. It was remarkably silent — First Squad prides itself on its sneak attacks — and most of it was done with knives and small caliber arms, fitted with silencers. The room I came into must have been some kind of conditioning chamber, because there was a boy strapped into a chair — he couldn’t have been more than ten years old — with all sorts of wires and pads and stuff attached to his head and neck. My entry point was through a dumbwaiter just behind where the torturer was standing, and the fucker didn’t even hear me when I crawled out of it. He was saying something to the boy, when I grabbed him from behind and drove a double-bladed knife into his spine.

Even though I’d motioned to him to keep quiet, it was too much for the poor kid — the guy I’d stabbed fell right into his lap, and he gave out this desperate yelp. In less than a second, two guards who must’ve been standing right outside the door, came rushing in. The first one caught a second knife in the face — I just threw it at him from across the room — but the other one got close and wrestled me to the ground. Fortunately, I had a third knife strapped to my ankle, so while he was struggling to get me prone, I stabbed him in the temple.

When the kid and I got out into the hallway, it was complete chaos. I’d given orders to my squad to trash the place once they’d secured it and freed all the kids, and they were already doing it — setting fires, smashing windows and furniture — a total fucking riot, and that’s when I first saw Bobby. He was one of the older ones and tall, lean, and inhumanly beautiful. Shit, he practically glowed.   

Anyway, he’d stopped one of my squaddies from trashing a particular office, and as I approached them, I could hear him telling her that it belonged to the Director and that there were important files on the computer, which might help us get into other Refusenik centers in LA county. I followed them inside and it was there that we first locked eyes. I know it’s clichéd, but it was love at first sight. He gave me this little smile, and the corners of his eyes crinkled and he said, “You’re going to be my girlfriend. You know that, right?” Well, I was totally floored. I mean, here we are in this horrible place, where he’d been imprisoned and tortured — there are dead bodies everywhere, half the place is on fire — and he’s hitting on me. I tried to keep my cool — play the Big Serious Leader and all that — and said something like “Oh, you think so, huh?” but it came out all stuttering and girly, and I must have looked completely insane. Some chick in a red wig, decked out in burglar’s gear, clutching a grisly knife, and covered with blood from head to toe, giggling and flirting like a junior-high schooler with a crush.

Of course, Bobby was right, and the information stored on that computer got us into three more Refusenik centers in the county. In total, we’ve freed over a hundred and fifty kids and teens. Some of them have come to us, some of them have gone to other cells in the Rebellion, but every single one of them is free or at least, as free as any of us are. As for Bobby, he turned out to be a total star. Not two weeks had passed before we did another raid on another Center, and Bobby was right there with us. He’s a brilliant tactician, a tough fighter, and a sensitive and gentle lover. Yeah, he was right about that too. We started dating two days after we met, and two days after that, we were going steady. And now? He’s my First Advisor too.

Claire: Bobby!

Bobby: Hey, Red! Happy Birthday!

Claire: Kiss first. Talk second.

Bobby: I like your priorities.

Claire: They didn’t make me leader for nothing. Mmm, taste it baby, apricot lip gloss.  

Bobby: I like your lip gloss.

Claire: It’s quiet tonight.

Bobby: Yeah, ever since Johnny Street… Shit Claire, I was training that poor kid for leadership. I can’t fucking believe it.

Claire: I know, honey. I couldn’t stop crying for days. I was his receiver, when he first came. Used to give him warm milk at night. I’m totally devastated.

Bobby: Your speech at the funeral was beautiful; that poem you wrote for him.

Claire: That’s the first time I’ve actually felt comfortable reading in front of people. There was so much love in the room. It was like singing to your children; the most natural thing in the world.

Bobby: So, what’s the first stop on the Claire Standish birthday tour? The G-Zone?

Claire: You know it. Raps is gonna’ be there, and Farmer Ted told me that he’d have me hauled in to answer for myself, if I didn’t let him give me complimentary bottles of Cristal all night. I mean, where does he get all that shit?

Bobby: Please. They’ve got gifts pouring from every Infiltrator from LA to La Jolla.  The geeks are Like Gods Among Us, and you know they’re the only ones getting a kick out of this fucking nightmare we’re all in.

Claire: I love them for that. It’s subversive. They don’t realize it, but they’re totally punk.  

Bobby: You can’t be punk if you rule the world, and they do. They’re in charge here, Claire, not us. They’ve got their own thing going on, you know? And nationally? Who fucking knows? I hear rumors that Farmer Ted’s just one of several regional bosses. How scary is that? They’re like the fucking Navigator’s Guild in Dune or something. Way too much power.

Claire: You just betrayed your inner Geek there, Bobby.

Bobby: It was the first comparison that came to mind.

Claire: And you’re ranting.

Bobby: Sorry.

Claire: Anyway, I think they deserve it.  

Bobby: Deserve what? Endless luxury? Exemption from patrol and from combat operations? Groupies? I mean, really.

Claire: The Geeks give ‘em all the toys they want and they give the Geeks …well, they give the Geeks what every Geek wants: a hot girlfriend. I think of it as Social Justice.

Bobby: That’s one word for it.

Claire: Do you remember what it was like for them before the Restoration? Think about it: they had it bad, even when it was good for the rest of us. And it wasn’t the adults picking on them, it was the other kids piling on the insults and humiliation, and especially the pretty girls. Well, now the Geeks are at the top of the heap, and suddenly, every hot girl wants a Geek boyfriend. How is that not justice? I mean, when they put STEALTH up and we were suddenly invisible? They saved all of our fucking lives, including all the kids who would have been pushing them down and stealing their lunch money. So, as far as I’m concerned, every time some cutie gives a Geek a blowjob, we all get to live another day.

Bobby: You’re right of course.

Claire: Girl equals right, remember?

Bobby: You enjoy that.

Claire: Fucker.  

 Bobby: C’mere.

Claire: Yessir. Mmm.

Bobby: Okay, G-Zone. Ready?

Claire: Ready!