“Scaling K2”
(Part 3 of a series)
by P. Orin Zack
[12/11/2012]

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Les said, holding a splayed hand up for respite. “You’ve made your point, Ifan. I agree. Caving to the mayor’s new rule was profoundly stupid. But it’s done. We folded. The General Assembly voted, and that’s that. The question is what do we do now?”

Ifan Davies glanced around the depressingly deserted public square that the capitol city’s Occupy Wall Street community had called home for the past year. The two were sitting on the wood and iron bench from atop of which the GA was usually called into session.

A few days earlier, the police department’s new surveillance drone had monitored a run-through of Les’ latest street-theater project, in which several competing speakers found common cause as their separate contingents of the people’s mike began to synch up. The following morning, the mayor issued a new executive order designed to make the event illegal. In the interest of public safety, he’d said, he was prohibiting groups larger than ten people from saying or doing anything in unison. As Ifan had pointed out during the GA, the rule may have been intended to hobble the people’s mike, but it was so badly conceived that it also applied to everything from high school cheerleaders to the mayor’s favorite church choir. Nevertheless, the GA succumbed to the illogic of it, and voted to acquiesce. The whole thing left a bad taste in Ifan’s mouth, but there it was.

“What we do now, Les,” he said, “is figure out how to turn this turd to our advantage.”

“What, like there’s an upside to having the Occupy bound and gagged?”

“That was how the people’s mike came about in the first place. No bullhorns in Zucotti Park and all that. It was a workaround.”

“Maybe so,” Les said, “but there’s more to it than just parroting the speaker. The mike demands involvement. Even if you aren’t making proposals or running a SIG, you still play a vital role because the people who do speak can’t be heard unless you participate. This abomination is going to eviscerate us!”

“Cut the drama okay? There’s always—.” Ifan was suddenly distracted by the sight of the Occupy’s tech team hurrying towards them with an open netbook in her hands. Angela Scarlotti was left holding the community’s tech bag solo after the others beat shoe leather following yesterday’s GA. As far as Ifan was concerned, their exit spoke more about their value to the community than anything they’d done before adversity had stared them down. He grinned as she slowed to catch her breath. “What’s up Ace?”

“You’ve got… to see this,” she said, dropping to a crouch in front of them so they could both view the small screen. “Early this morning, the rule we’ve been saddled with was also imposed on the downstate Occupy, only for them it was pre-emptive. They hadn’t done or planned anything to scare the power structure like we did. I guess they were ticked off about the rule, because they just about invited the cops to enforce it. Someone called for a mike check to greet the stormtroopers, and they dutifully started making arrests. Started. But then, one of them changed sides, and his buddy shielded him when the CO ordered him taken down. Anyway, they hauled everyone off and rent-a-fenced the site.”

“But if they’ve been shut down, what were you going to show us?”

Angela flashed a subversive grin. “The resurrection. Downstate’s Occupy has been reconstituted, and their mascot appears to be a kid named Kendrik. I’ve downloaded the interview he did for their new livestream. Have a look.”

When Ifan unpaused the video, the camera pulled back from what looked like a short stack of logoed cyclone fence sections with crude tin-can cornstalks and cattails growing out of it, and panned to a fortyish woman wearing pink coveralls. “I’m Althea Gordon. As you can see, we’ve converted the JonesCo porta-fences that were brought in to keep the city’s Occupy Wall Street community from re-entering this building site into a piece of public art. It’s a visual reminder that we grow through adversity. I’m here today because a friend of mine was arrested this morning for calling a mike check to greet the riot cops. Her name is Natalie Knox. When she’s not helping people with their research at the downtown library, she helps people to understand their power as citizens with a little help from the books she’s promoted from supporters in the wider community. This building site was re-occupied a few hours ago because of some advice she gave to a brave young man named Kendrik Knox, her grandson. But he prefers to be called K2. Would you tell our viewers why?”

The camera shifted to a kid about ten years old who was busy examining a chunk of concrete. “Sure,” he said, nodding. “It started as a joke, really. My initials are KK, but there’s also a K at the end of my first name, so I started signing my homework KKK.”

Angela grimaced. “I’ll bet that went over big.”

“Well,” Kendrik continued, “my teacher sent a note home to my parents, and they asked me to stop doing it.”

“Did they tell you why?”

He shook his head. “Nope. And that just made me mad.”

“So what did you do?”

Kendrik grinned. “I asked my gram Natalie. I figured since she worked at the library, maybe she could help me figure it out.” He suddenly got very serious. “So, um, she showed me some history books and some pictures about the Ku Klux Klan. It’s pretty scary stuff. I guess that’s why my folks were afraid to talk about it, but my gram wasn’t. She said it was important to know history, because we can’t learn from our mistakes if we don’t know about them. She also showed me some stuff about how people who tried to do or say something about bad things have been treated.”

“Oh? Like who?”

“Well, there were a lot of them, but the two that stick out in my mind are John Brown and Bradley Manning.” He twitched uncomfortably at the thought. “Private Manning was—. Can they really do that sort of thing to people?”

“Sadly, yes,” Althea said. “But what does all that have to do with why you call yourself K2?”

He nodded. “My gram called it a nem… a mnemonic, something to help me remember. There are three Ks in my name, but the third one, the one in my last name, is silent. She said that if it doesn’t speak out, if it doesn’t make itself known, it doesn’t count. And that’s true for people, too. That’s why I couldn’t just go to school when I saw her being arrested for talking to the police. I couldn’t be quiet about that. I had to do something, to make what she did count. That’s why I came down here on my own, and that’s why a lot of other people are here as well.”

Ifan stopped the video and closed his eyes for a moment. “Jeez,” he said at last, “and we’re arguing over how to deal with a stupid rule?”

Angela took the netbook back and stood up. “Sometimes,” she said, “a little perspective can be a real kick in the pants.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Les, rising to join her. “So what are we going to do?”

Ifan looked up at them for a moment before standing. “I think we should leave the square, get out into the community, take this fight where it belongs.”

Angela crossed her arms. “And where, exactly is that?”

He hooked a thumb towards an older section of town. “The Lunchpail district. If there’s anywhere in this city that speaks of the ninety-nine percent, that’s it. This city started as a factory town, after all, and that’s what’s left of the original workers’ community, from back when the unions were still a force to be reckoned with.”

Les shrugged in confusion. “What the heck for? Isn’t that the slum where JonesCo wants to put up more overpriced condos and strip malls?”

“To stop them, that’s what for.”

He was aghast. “Stop them? Are you nuts? What are we going to do, wave some signs in their faces?”

“Have you been living under a rock?” Angela said in exasperation. “The whole point of being here, in fact the whole point of Occupy Wall Street, is to focus people’s attention on how those with power have been using it against those without it. If waving signs makes that happen, then we’ll wave signs. But this fight isn’t about the square we’re in, any more than Wendell Jones’ subsidized housing developments are about serving the underclass. They’re about power, who has it, and who doesn’t.”

“Oh, right,” Les retorted. “If you think the two of you are going to have any effect on his plans, you ought to check yourself into the psych ward and get fitted for a rubber room.”

“Look,” Angela said fiercely, “you don’t have to be part of this if you don’t want to. But please don’t get in our way. C’mon Ifan.”

*     *     *

The neighborhood that Wendell Jones had targeted for rebuilding was abuzz with activity when Ifan and Angela stepped off the bus. Rented vans were parked in front of several of the tidy little post-war homes on the block, and people were hurrying about with boxes and furniture. They walked to the nearest van and approached a white-haired man who was sliding a heavy book box into the back.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ifan said. “I heard that JonesCo was helping people in the neighborhood to move. How’s that going?”

The man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Y’know,” he said, “it’s really not fair of them to force the issue like this.”

Angela glanced back at the man’s home. “You didn’t want to move out?”

“Hell, no. My wife and I had this place paid off years ago. But then the insurance company threatened to cancel if we didn’t replace the roof, and the only way to afford that was to remortgage the house. When the crash happened, I lost my job as an expediter for the factory and haven’t worked regular since then. We limped along on whatever part-time work we could find, but then my wife took ill. Miss a couple of payments and the bank wants to foreclose. JonesCo offered to clear our debts if we moved to their subsidized housing complex on the other side of town, so it was either that or the street. We’re moving, but we’re certainly not happy about it.”

“So you’ve already sold your house?” Ifan said.

The man gave them a puzzled look. “Sold it? No. They told us they’d take care of everything. Right now, we’re just trying to get moved out.”

Angela nudged Ifan. “Doesn’t Jones deal in CDOs?”

He nodded. “I’m Ifan Davies, and this is Angela Scarlotti. We’re from Occupy Wall Street. If there were a way to keep your house, would you be interested, Mr…?”

“Carver.” He extended his hand. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know how much you know about the man behind JonesCo, Mr. Carver, but a good deal of Wendell Jones’ fortune, and most of his construction empire, was built by slipping through gaps in the law. He did a lot of trading in collateralized debt obligations – bundled mortgages like yours – in which the chain of custody was broken.”

“He what?”

“It’s like this,” Angela said, “in order for Jones to legally buy your house, the outfit that holds your mortgage must have clear title to it. Since Jones prefers to trade in CDOs, there’s a good chance that your mortgage-holder has actually sold the loan, and its only acting as payment agent for all the investors who own a piece of it through the bond it was cooked into. Unless someone can prove that they own your mortgage, he can’t buy it from them.”

A twentyish young man with a neatly trimmed beard quietly slid a box into the van beside Carver’s, turned, and glanced expectantly at the newcomers.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Carver said sheepishly, and introduced them to Thad. He was a volunteer from the First Assembly Church who’d been helping him to pack out. Thad explained that he’d come down with a group organized by John Avendale Simms, the church’s Pastor, to welcome their new neighbors into the religious community in the complex that Carver and several others on the block were moving to. But when Angela explained that she and Ifan were part of OWS, he excused himself, and said he’d be back shortly with Pastor Simms.

“That’s friendly of them,” Ifan said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Carver glanced into the van, and then turned back towards his house. “Now I’m not so sure,” he said. “If what you say is true, maybe I shouldn’t take their offer after all.”

“Whose offer,” Angela asked, “JonesCo’s or the First Assembly Church?”

“Both, maybe. Simms’ congregation is deeply into outreach, as you can probably guess from their presence here. Well, they also encourage their parishioners to open their homes to people who are living on the street.”

“Kinda like what the city’s been doing to the Occupy lately,” said Ifan. “How strong is their encouragement?”

He frowned. “Very. I got the strong impression that it might as well be mandatory. And as much as I’d like to help others, that’s really got to be a personal choice.”

Angela nodded. “So you’re feeling pressured from both directions.”

Carver eyed her suspiciously. “What’s your angle anyway? I mean, why are you two here in the first place?”

“To be perfectly honest, it’s partly out of frustration. A few days ago, I was helping a bunch of folks work the kinks out of a new street theater project. Unfortunately, the mayor’s new tech toy — that police drone he got from Homeland Security, caught us on video, and he pushed through an absurd new rule to shut down Occupy Wall Street’s ability to conduct business or stage a protest.”

“I’ve never been much a fan of the guy. What rule was that?”

“Believe it or not, it’s now illegal in this city for more than ten people to do or say anything in unison.”

He chuckled. “But that would shut Pastor Simms’ choir down, too. Our mayor isn’t too bright, is he?”

“Well,” Ifan said, “I figure it’s going to be enforced about as uniformly as the statutes on financial crimes are. They’ll probably just use it on us, and leave everyone else alone. But getting back to your move, what are you going to do?”

“Yes, Mr. Carver,” another voice asked, “what are you going to do?”

“Oh,” Carver said as he turned around, “Hi Pastor Simms. We were just discussing the mayor’s hardline stance against churches. He’s just declared war on religion. What are you going to do about that?”

The man’s eyes widened. “He’s what?”

“It’s true,” Ifan said solemnly, “according to the new rule, if more than ten people say ‘amen’ together, they’re breaking the law.”

“After I helped to get him elected? Well, “ Simms said as he turned to go, “we’ll just have to see about that.”

Thad, who stood directly behind Simms, hastily stepped aside while glancing back and forth between his boss and Carver, unsure of what he was supposed to do. But just as he started to ask for directions, Pastor Simms ordered him to follow.

Ifan lost his composure about the time the pastor angrily pulled out his cell phone and started barking orders at some ecumenical underling. “You are quick, Mr. Carver,” he said. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of an argument with you.”

Angela murmured agreement, but she seemed a bit upset about something.

“Thanks. I tell myself never to let anyone steamroll me into something I don’t really want to do, but it’s not so easy when it’s someone you don’t want to offend, or someone with power over you.” He nodded towards Simms. “The worst part about it is that when a jerk like that get’s the better of someone, it boosts his confidence.”

“Maybe,” Ifan said with a chuckle, “that’s why they call them ‘confidence men’.”

“What do you think he’s going to do now?”

“Well, with that fire you just lit under him, I’d guess he’s going to threaten his buddy the mayor with his warped version of hell if he doesn’t rescind that rule of his.” He turned to Angela. “Is something wrong, Ace?”

“Yeah, there’s something wrong.” She said, glancing back towards Simms, and brandishing her cellphone. “You two just started a delicious political avalanche, and I didn’t get it on video.”

While Ifan was laughing, Thad approached, minus the pleasantness he’d shown earlier. He spoke brusquely, and seemed somehow more at ease for it. “Okay, Mr. Carver, here’s the deal. Pastor Simms said to give you one last chance to accept our help moving, but if you refused it, I can toss your crap on the street.”

“Gee,” Angela said, angling her cell phone screen towards Ifan so he could see that she’d been recording the audio all along, “what a gallant offer. You’re a real gentleman, aren’t you?”

Thad elbowed them aside and reached for a book box. “Well,” he said, balancing it on the edge of the bed, “what’s it to be?”

Carver steadied the box and looked Thad in the eye. “You’ll let us unload my stuff, squirt, or you can explain it to the police. Or didn’t you see the Block Watch sign on the corner?”

He took a step back and crossed his arms. “You’ve got three minutes, grandpa. After that, I’m driving off with whatever’s still inside.”

Ifan quickly slipped into the van and started shifting everything to the rear, while Carver and Angela scrambled to ferry it to the sidewalk. Two of Carver’s neighbors came running over to find out what was happening, but one look at Thad was all it took for them to pitch in as well. With their help, the van was emptied with time to spare.

“That was a really stupid move,” Thad said as he closed the rear gate. “JonesCo’s gonna evict your ass one way or another. When it does, don’t expect to be able to buy or rent from anyone in this city’s religious community. Pastor Simms is a very powerful man, and he doesn’t take acts like this lightly.”

“What was stupid,” Angela said, taking a step closer, “was making a threat like that in public. We’ve got witnesses.”

He laughed. “Who can be bought or scared off.”

“Maybe. But we’ve also got a recording of the entire exchange. This isn’t going away. Now go run to your pastor.”

Thad snarled ineffectively as he boarded the van, then slammed the door and drove off. Carver’s neighbors immediately grilled him about what had happened. After he got them up to speed, and while they were all hauling Carver’s stuff back to his house, Ifan and Angela filled them in about the mayor’s new rule, the fact that it had been instituted downstate as well, and how it affected their ability to stage any kind of unified protest.

There was a knock at the door while they were mulling over what to do next. It was a uniformed member of the capitol police. According to the officer, Pastor Simms had called 911 to report a disturbance.

“What sort of disturbance,” Carver asked, beckoning the officer to enter.

“Well,” he said, glancing at each of the people in the sparse living room, “according to the report, he said that two people from outside of the neighborhood had come in to incite the residents to violate their contracts with JonesCo for the sale of their homes.

“Oh?” said Ifan, approaching the officer. “Does that mean Pastor Simms is acting as an agent of JonesCo?”

“Are you one of the people he’s talking about, sir?” the officer said, gesturing for him to keep his distance.

“They’re my guests,” Carver said protectively. “So what happens now?”

“That depends. Is what Pastor Simms said correct? Did you have a sales contract with JonesCo?”

Carver was about to answer when Ifan interrupted. “If he did, officer, it was obtained under duress. All we’ve done is to question the chain of custody on the deed to this property. You can’t violate an invalid contract.”

The officer thought for a moment. “Are you acting as his attorney, then, Mr…?”

“Davies. No, sir, but in my role at the Occupy—.”

“You’re part of Occupy Wall Street? Then what are you doing here?”

“It’s not like we’re prisoners of that city park we’ve been using,” Angela said. “Besides, with the mayor’s new rule against unified action, it seemed wise to change our strategy.”

“By engaging in what I suppose you could call community outreach and enlisting people like Mr. Carver here to take individual action?”

“Now that you put it that way,” she said, “that’s exactly what we’re doing: empowering the ninety-nine percent. Have you ever though about going into marketing?”

“Or political activism?” Ifan added, chuckling.

“All that aside,” the officer said, “I do have to file a report.”

“In that case,” Carver said, “wouldn’t you have to establish whether this contract I’m accused of violating actually exists? And since Simms contends that my friends have come to incite my neighbors to do the same thing, wouldn’t you have to ask them as well?”

The officer eyed him suspiciously. “Are you trying to get me to take sides in this? I’m supposed to be impartial.”

“You’re right,” Ifan said. “The executives in any organization would want their enforcers to play at being impartial. But the fact remains; you are part of the ninety-nine percent. We’re doing this to protect your rights, just as much as we’re protecting Mr. Carver’s and all of his neighbors’. So yes, I’m trying to get you to take sides. I’m trying to get you to cross that line they want you to toe and be a protector of the people, rather than of the likes of Pastor Simms, Wendell Jones, and for that matter our not-so-beloved mayor.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Angela said, digging out her netbook. “This morning, when the riot police were ordered to arrest a group of downstate occupiers for violating a rule patterned after the one we’ve been saddled with, one of them switched sides.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I heard. He would have had to arrest his own sister, a city councilwoman. Not that it did any good. They still arrested the lot of them, then cleared and locked the site. All he gained from his foolishness was trouble from his CO.”

“Not exactly,” Angela said. “He also gained something else: the self-confidence you get from standing up for your convictions. The grandson of one of the people arrested there this morning, a ten-year-old kid named Kendrik, put us all to shame today. He singlehandedly convinced the people of that city to retake the building lot their Occupy was using, and he did it because of something his grandmother told him: if you’re silent, you don’t count.”

“Okay, okay. But what can I do? I’m just here to respond to a call.”

“Simple,” Ifan said. “Do what Mr. Carver suggested. Speak to his neighbors.”

“Done.”

THE END

Copyright 2012 by P. Orin Zack

“Making it Count”
(Part 2 of a series)
by P. Orin Zack
[9/30/2012]

“Holy crap,” 11-year-old Kendrik Knox whispered excitedly. As his dropped spoon hit the cereal bowl, he reached for the milk-splattered tablet beside it. “That’s Gram!”

K2, as Kendrik preferred to be called, was a news junkie. That was his grandmother Natalie’s doing. She was a librarian, and had shown him how to find out what was really going on in the world. Of course, his folks weren’t too thrilled with that. Especially his dad, who’d pretty much written his own mother off as a lost cause when she announced that she was joining the ninety-nine percent. That’s why she’d gotten him the pad for his birthday — so they could message one another surreptitiously, even when she was minding a bookstand in a vacant downtown building lot.

It was Monday, September 17^th, 2012, the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and Kendrik was browsing the OWS livefeeds from around the world to see how the day was being celebrated when the master site suddenly switched to video from his own city. The camera was zoomed in on a woman with a book in her raised hand. The image was pretty shaky, but Kendrik would know his grandmother’s voice anywhere. “Good morning, officers,” she’d said, and the crowd, as the People’s Mike, echoed.

His eyes widened as the camera spun around to show the line of armored police she was addressing. Then it went back to his grandmother. It looked like she was scanning the street for someone. Whoever it was, she must have found them, because she straightened and stood silently for a few seconds. Then, in a loud, clear voice, she said, “We are non-violent.”

The livestreamer was startled by the sound of a police whistle, and spun back towards the cops. They had started to grab people and quickly zip plastic cuffs on them. The camera then turned back towards where his grandmother had been, but she was no longer there. It zoomed out momentarily, and then focused on a cop in the crowd. He was parting the people and leading someone in cuffs towards the street.

“Gram!” Kendrik cried.

“We are not threatening you.” This time it was another voice. But just as the camera had located the new speaker, a hand closed over the lens and the feed stopped.

“Kenny?” his mother called as she strode into the kitchen, “are you okay?”

He scooped up the tablet and brandished it at her. “I am, mom, but Gram’s just been arrested! I just saw a riot cop hauling her off, honest.”

She laughed dismissively. “Sure you did. Did she put you up to this?”

“I did see it! She was on the Internet!”

Unfortunately for Kendrik, it was getting late, and his mother hustled him off to walk to school. He took the tablet, but because it was wifi-only, there was no way he could track down the video clip en route. By the time he turned the corner, he’d already decided to blow off school and bus it down to the encampment to see what he could ferret out on his own.

“Hang in there, Gram,” he muttered as he boarded the downtown express, “I’ve got your back.” Of one thing he was absolutely sure: whatever trouble he might be in for playing hooky was nothing compared to the whirlwind his grandmother had just conjured up. And Kendrik wanted in on the action.

The first row behind the bus door was vacant, so he swung in and watched the city go by. When the bus stopped a while later to let two twenty-somethings deep in discussion get on, he noticed that they had OWS stickers on their gear.

“Man,” the first one said conspiratorially after swiping his fare card for the both of them, “did you see what they did to that riot cop?”

“Pretty harsh,” the other replied as he slid into the seat behind Kendrik. “But, geez, what’d he expect them to do when he body-blocked his wing-man to protect the cop who turned on them.”

“I don’t know,” the first said, “if you’re a cop, aren’t you supposed to hang tight? I mean, protect your buds-in-blue and all that?”

“Yeah. Well, after that old gal threw it down on the People’s Mike, I thought for sure they were gonna have her for lunch.”

Kendrik swung one knee onto the seat and turned to face them. “Are you talking about what happened this morning at the Occupy downtown?”

“Sure kid. We’re heading there now. Why?”

“That was my gram. I mean the lady who greeted the cops. Do you know what happened to her? I had to leave after that livestreamer was taken down.”

The man nodded. “It was pretty intense, kid. After that cop cuffed her and led her into the street, this other woman breaks through the line of cops and starts screaming at their CO about them all being the mayor’s private army and everything. And that riot cop who’d turned? He was right there beside her. So then the other woman – your gram – drops to her knees and goes limp on the cop trying to get her into the paddywagon. And throughout all this, the string of occupiers passing around the People’s Mike are running through a litany of all the violence that’s been wrung down on protesters over the years. Damn!”

Kendrik stared at him for a long moment. “So… they took her to jail?”

“I don’t know, kid. Last I saw, the cop that was with her had been called off to deal with something else.” He held out his smartphone. “Here, see for yourself.”

Kendrik took the phone and held it against the top of the seat back so they could all see the screen. “Okay, everyone,” the livestreamer said, gasping for air, “this is Ishmael. Becky’s rig was just confiscated, so I guess I’m it. Dirty lasts.” He zoomed in on a cyclone fence. “Do you see that? Behind the fence, there’s a bunch of uniformed police. I hear they’ve been called in from all over the county. That’s the border guard. They’ve got mace and tasers, and they’re watching for escapees.” He zoomed back in and pointed the camera towards the open end of the lot. “It’s been crazy down here. The cops have been entering in teams and rounding up a group of people at a time with those orange plastic nets, so they can walk them out and cart them off.” Then he panned around the encampment. “There’s not many of us left down here, so if you know­—.”

Black. The feed went dead.

The three exchanged uncomfortable glances while the bus slowed for a light. Once he had the phone back, the man gestured suspiciously at Kendrik and said, “Hey, what are you doing on the downtown express? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Kendrik gave him a withering look. “I don’t care. This is more important. My Gram’s in trouble.”

“So look,” he said, “as long as we’re all headed down there, we might as well work together. “I’m Jason. He’s Marty.”

“Call me K2.”

“Like the peak?”

“Yeah. Well, it was originally just on account of my name, but my Gram showed me a book about all the people who died climbing Mt. Kechu. She’s a librarian. A subversive one.”

“No, kid,” Jason said, laughing, “your Gram’s a leader!”

The dusty building site where the encampment had been was empty when they arrived, and a portable cyclone fence had been erected across the street side of the lot, the only one that didn’t have a fence on it already.

“Okay,” Kendrik said, “so now what?”

“I suppose we could try to figure out where they took everyone,” Jason said, “or… we could bust this gate open and retake the camp.”

“Retake the camp?” Marty said doubtfully. “What good would that do? There’s just the three of us.”

Kendrik looked at him for a moment, and then gazed out across the vacant lot. “You just reminded me of something my Gram messaged last week,” he said. “It only takes one person to change the world.”

They both eyed him curiously.

“And like you said, there are three of us.”

“So what’d you have in mind, K2?”

A mischievous grin lit his face. “Turnabout. Put out the word. Reconstitute the encampment. Only this time we keep the little present they left the Occupy.”

“Now, now,” a gravelly voice said from behind them, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, little man.”

They turned, and found themselves facing a very smug-looking porker in a business suit.

“Well then,” he said, “I’m Wendell Jones.”

“The high-rise developer, right?” said Jason. “Yeah. I’ve seen your slimy propaganda on what passes for the news in this city.”

“Good,” he said, “then you know why I’m here. Now that the vermin have been evicted, I can close my deal with the idiots who own this lot, and finally build something profitable on it.”

“I see,” Marty said, “and, uh, I suppose you needed to come down and see for yourself that it’s empty because you can’t figure out how to operate a web browser?”

Jones sneered and turned to leave. “Get a job, both of you.”

“We own our own tech company, you moron,” Jason called after him.

He stopped, turned, and said, “Uh-huh. Well, if you keep hanging around underage boys like that, you may find that business of yours in the dumper.” Then he left.

“Well,” Kendrik said impatiently, “you heard him. He only gets to buy this lot if it stays vacant. We’ve got work to do!”

Jason reached out and rattled the fence. “I’d love to, but there’s a little problem to deal with. Either we’re going to have cut ourselves an entrance, or everyone we get down here will have to scale this with their gear. And I don’t happen to own a set of bolt cutters.”

“I do.” The voice belonged to a fortyish woman in pink mechanic’s coveralls who was standing by the fence a few yards behind Kendrik. She was examining the padlock on the chain joining two sections together. Once she had their attention, she added, “but before I go get them, I need some information.”

Kendrik walked towards her. “Okay, lady,” he said jauntily, “shoot.”

The two men exchanged surprised glances and followed.

“I heard about what happened here this morning,” she said. “Is it true that it was Natalie Knox, the librarian, who threw down the gauntlet with the People’s Mike when the storm troopers arrived?”

Marty nudged his young friend. “You’re on, kid.”

“That’s right,” he said proudly. “And we’re gonna make the mayor regret he ever sent his goons down here to arrest her. Why? Do you know her?”

She smiled broadly. “Yeah. I do, young man. My name’s Althea, by the way. Althea Gordon.”

“Hi. I’m Kendrik Knox, but my friends call me K2.”

“I’m honored. But shouldn’t it be K3?”

“Nah. The third K’s silent, so it doesn’t count.”

She laughed delightedly. “That’s good. I see you inherited her sense of humor. Well, Kendrik, a few years ago, your grandmother Natalie helped me get back into the workforce after my marriage fell apart. Not in a million years would I have ever dreamed that I’d be fabricating public art installations for a living. And yet that’s exactly what happened, because she believed in me. I owe her. I owe her big time. So what’s the plan here?”

“It’s pretty simple, really,” Jason said. “We need a flash-mob, and we need it now. But in order for this operation to get any traction, we absolutely have to get some livestreams going. It’s a sure bet the local media aren’t going to pay any attention to us unless we give them something they can’t afford to miss. And that means there has to be something to see. We’ll need signage, traffic, and lots of warm bodies.”

“Great,” Althea said. “I’ll go get my cutters and whatever else I can rustle together. Back soon.”

People started arriving, most of them looking for friends and relatives who’d been at the encampment. After he got them up to speed, Jason asked them some questions to gauge their interests and abilities, and started assigning them to various tasks. He also asked anyone with a cell phone to put the word out about what else was needed. Marty assembled a team to start cleaning up the debris that remained on the site, but since Althea hadn’t returned yet, they scaled the fence and started policing the area.

As the morning wore on, Kendrik, who’d taken it upon himself to welcome people to the new encampment, became antsy about how his school might have reacted to his absence. If they called his parents, he’d be in for a lot of trouble. Fortunately, Althea returned with more than just the bolt cutters. A couple of her friends had chipped in to get stuff to eat, so at least he wouldn’t have to do his worrying on an empty stomach.

Once the chain was cut, people who weren’t up to climbing the fence started streaming into the site. And that’s when the police car rolled up. Kendrik drifted closer so he could hear better.

“That’s right,” the officer said, “a bunch of people have re-entered the site. It looks like they cut their way in. The thing is, I don’t know whether they’re trespassing or not. The landowner did say the Occupy Wall Street people could stay they there as long as they wanted. So unless they break that new rule, I’m gonna just sit here and do what I can to keep the peace.”

Kendrik jumped when Jason suddenly tapped him on the shoulder.

“Got a minute, kid?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“We’ve finished setting up the new video streaming kit, and were discussing what to do with it. Althea had the best suggestion. She thinks that since your grandmother set off this morning’s fireworks, we ought to give you the honor of telling the world this isn’t over yet. What do you think?”

Kendrik gaped. “What would I say?”

“Well, you can probably say whatever you want, but I think you ought to think about it like you’re speaking directly to your grandmother, and everyone else is just lurking on your skype call.”

“All right. Where are we doing this?”

“How about right here?”

Kendrik nodded thoughtfully, and Jason motioned for the livestreamer to come closer.

“Hi Gram.” Kendrik said unsteadily. “It’s K2. Don’t tell mom, but after I saw you get arrested on the Internet, I ditched school and took a bus to the encampment. I met some really nice people, including a lady welder who said she owed you a favor. Oh, yeah. We ran into this guy called Wendell Jones when we got here. He said he could buy this place and build something on it if there was nobody occupying it, so we decided to save it for you and the others. I heard that you told the folks here about the Wobblies last night, and about how they all watched one another’s back. Well, we’re doing them one better. They hauled your entire encampment away, so we gathered another one to take its place. Most of them are friends and family of the people they took away this morning. We’ve got your back, Gram.”

The End

(The series continues in “Scaling K2“)

“Crossing the Line”
(Part 1 of a series)
by P. Orin Zack
[9/24/2012]

Central District City Councilwoman Sue Winston dropped her ever-present smile and nervously glanced around the shared office before answering. When she did, it was in little more than a whisper, and she’d cupped her free hand over the cell phone.

“You’re sure about this, Peter?” she said. “Mayor Svanstrom’s threatened to cut us out of the loop before, but this would be the first time he’d ever carried it out.”

“Absolutely, sis. My squad’s been issued blanket overtime approval for civilian management duty.”

She closed her eyes and fought the sudden chill in the room. So now they’re calling it ‘civilian management’, are they? Ever since Homeland Security began luring Svanstrom’s predecessors into militarizing the city’s police force, more and more managerial doublespeak had been drafted into a growing army of euphemisms. If they’d been on Skype, the dread she harbored would have been obvious. As it was, she was certain that her brother could read it just from the sound of her breathing. But because Peter chose to wait through the uncomfortable silence, rather than prompting her, a ragged semblance of sibling courtesy survived.

“Do you think it might get…” she said weakly, “…that you could get hurt?”

She regretted the remark even before it left her lips. Of course he could get hurt. That risk had always been part of his job. But this was intentional. Sending a line of police in full riot gear to confront peaceful demonstrators on the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street was a calculated act of psychological warfare. Who knows what might happen. One thing was certain, though: the mayor wanted his city’s Occupy to snap, to give him an excuse to make his backers happy by taking action against them. She wouldn’t even put it past the man to have stocked the scene with agents provocateurs. He so despised losing.

Peter forced a laugh. “Seriously, Suki, I could get hurt writing a traffic ticket.”

She knew that he’d used his pet name for her to put her at ease, but the Anime reference only gave her a kit-bashed image of the wide-eyed youngster she’d favored in grade school beset by a line of cartoon monsters wearing Kevlar armor and face shields. “I know,” she said weakly. “Look, I have to go. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Any time, sis.”

Sue stared at the phone for a few seconds before putting it away. Tomorrow morning, she mused darkly. In less than a day, her peaceful town would join the militaristic cancer sweeping the country. She tried to imagine herself as one of the people still valiantly holding onto the slim hope that ‘the 99%’ could have any effect on the oligarchy’s power brokers, and failed miserably. Here she was on the City Council, albeit on the fluke of an unexpectedly vacated seat and no serious opposition in the special election, and she felt as powerless as she imagined the Occupy would be against what was about to go down.

She was startled out of her reverie by the intercom. Gail at reception said that a very determined visitor was heading her way, so she tidied her desk and tried to put the image of Peter in riot gear out of her mind for the moment.

“Thanks for seeing me, Ms. Winston,” the man said as he approached. “I was afraid that your gatekeeper back there would shunt me off to my home district’s councilmember. You see, this issue has to do with the district where I work, not where I live.”

“Actually,” she said, rising to shake his outstretched hand, “I’m glad you did. Most people don’t realize that they can do that. So what can I do for you?”

“Every day, I have to drive past that damned Hooverville on my commute.”

“Hooverville?” she echoed weakly. “Oh, you mean the city’s Occupy camp.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry. Where are my manners? I’m Wendell Jones.”

“It’s hard not to know your face, Mr. Jones, what with all the time you’ve been spending on the local news lately.”

“Yes, well. In that case, you probably know that I’ve been negotiating to purchase the land those cretins have usurped. After all this time, it’s pretty clear the do-gooders who own it can’t afford to put up the community center they’re always whining about.”

The building proposal he mentioned had first been flown long before Sue took office the previous spring, and she remembered seeing the developer’s sketches in the paper at the time. “It’s true, they can’t. That’s why they let the Occupy camp on it. So you’ve made an offer?”

“It’s a done deal. Except they refuse to sign until that rabble leaves.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I see your problem, Mr. Jones. And what would you like me to do about it?”

“Well, it is your district we’re talking about. Can’t you pressure those vagrants to leave?”

“Pressure them?” she said, leaning forward again. “Not really. That’s the landowner’s choice, and until they’ve signed your deal, they call the shots. Have you spoken to anyone else about this?”

“You mean besides the print and broadcast news? Sure. Mayor Svanstrom. He said he’d do what he could, but I’ve never found him to be very compliant. I guess I’ll just have to find some other way to apply some pressure, then.”

He blathered on for a while longer, but from the moment Jones mentioned the mayor, all Sue could think about was Peter’s call. By the time he left, she’d decided to go down to the encampment and warn them about the mayor’s staged confrontation.

On her way out, she stopped to tell Gail where she was going, in case anyone needed to find her. But instead of leaving, she just stood there for a moment, staring at the wall.

“You okay, Sue?”

“Yeah, but I just realized something. I’ve never been down to the encampment, even though it’s in my district.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. After all, you haven’t been at the job very long, and I can attest to the fact that you’ve had a pretty full schedule.”

“Thanks, but I still feel guilty about it.”

Sue spent most of the ten-block walk to the building-site encampment two-thumbing through the Internet on her smartphone looking for reports on what happened yesterday, when a rule like the mayor’s had been levied on the Occupy up in the state capitol. But the more she read, the more determined she became, and the faster she walked.

The massed voices of the ‘People’s Mike’ rose above the noise of traffic passing by as she approached the one unfenced side of the building site.

“—peaceful protesters, just like us…“

“—are being used as cover…“

“—by a violent faction…”

Phrase by phrase, members of the encampment were amplifying the speaker’s comments about the wave of attacks against US embassies across Africa and elsewhere which were conflated with non-violent reaction to an amateurish anti-Muslim video produced in the US.

As Sue approached the encampment’s street-corner lending library, she couldn’t help but wonder how the mayor might use the violence he seemed intent on provoking with his new rule for political purposes. To her, it started to feel all of a kind.

The fiftyish woman minding the stacks recognized her immediately, but when she attempted to strike up a conversation, Sue did little more than nod politely, and swept past on her way to the GA. She had just reached the outskirts of the crowd when the speaker finished talking and there was a lull in the proceedings.

“May I have the floor please?” she shouted.

An unshaven young man in an orange public-works vest appeared out of the crowd. “You must be new here,” he said, and briefed her about procedures while guiding her to the speakers’ area. He explained that he was a stackperson, which meant he helped manage the speakers’ list, and then told her that she’d get her chance to speak after those who were already queued up had their turn.

While orange-vest worked through the announcements roster, Sue paid special attention to the procedures, which were very different from what she was used to at City Council meetings. This was far less formal, for one thing, and people used hand signs for various purposes instead of just shouting at one another, which made her painfully aware of her earlier breach of protocol. On balance, she found herself preferring the more egalitarian feel of the GA. It was a very leveling experience, and therefore anathema to the political predators she sparred with at council meetings.

When it was Sue’s turn, another volunteer – a matronly type who introduced herself as Rose — reminded her to say one phrase, or a short sentence, at a time, so the others could echo it without losing track of what she said.

“I’m Councilwoman Susan Winston,” she said. “Mayor Svanstrom will be imposing a new rule tomorrow.”

Before the People’s Mike had finished echoing her words, someone yelled, “Are you his mouthpiece, then?”

She held up her hands for quiet, and made eye contact with the questioner. “He doesn’t know I’m here.” Only about a dozen voices repeated her response this time, but Rose told her to go ahead anyway.

“This… new rule,” she said unsteadily, “was imposed yesterday at the state capital.” She looked around the GA while her words were being echoed, estimating how many people were present, and how many were now participating in the Peoples’ Mike. “It limits the number of people who can legally say or do something in unison.”

Midway through repeating that last sentence, the coherence of the Peoples’ Mike fragmented into a self-conscious hubbub. Rose motioned her to wait for the crowd to settle down before continuing. “You would all be in violation.”

Several people thrust gun-fingers aloft: there were questions. The stackperson quickly ordered them and told the first to begin.

“How many people would that be exactly?”

“Ten. Way fewer than we have here right now.”

The next person in the queue cleared his throat. “Um… how do they intend to enforce this?”

“Police, in riot gear.” Her words echoed raggedly across the crowd. “And my own brother will be among them.” This time, even the fear in her voice was amplified.

The moderator jumped into the discussion. “What do you propose we do about it, Councilwoman Winston?”

“Propose?” she said, feeling completely out of her depth.

“Yes. Are you recommending that we comply with this rule?”

“I don’t really see how you can.”

Hands with a dozen questions rose simultaneously. The first posited breaking the People’s Mike into banks of ten people, an idea that the stackperson explained was thoroughly unworkable. The next suggested simply standing in clumps of ten in an attempt to evade the rule, a strategy applicable to actions as well as speaking. But when an example was offered, it became clear that doing so would defeat the whole point of concerted action.

It went on like this for a while, and then the discussion took an unexpected turn. The moderator had just suggested that an affinity group be formed to take the issue off-line until later in the GA, when Sue unsteadily raised her arms and made a triangle with her hands. “You have a point of process, Councilwoman Winston?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Why are we even discussing how to obey this absurd new rule?”

“Wasn’t that why you brought it up”?

Sue paled. Why indeed? Whose interests was she really representing here? She felt suddenly naked, bereft of any narrative to clothe her presence here. “Well,” she said, stretching the word for time, “shouldn’t you first decide whether to obey it?”

“Before we even determine if that’s possible?”

Risking even further embarrassment, she scanned the crowd, and then replied, “I think so, yes. There are things that I won’t do, simply as a matter of principle. Taking bribes, for example. Where is that line for you? Is the People’s Mike, for example, an essential part of the Occupy?”

The moderator took the sense of the crowd. It was widely agreed that the People’s Mike was simply a countermove to the initial prohibition of bullhorns at Zucotti Park in New York City. It wasn’t essential here, but adopting its use was an act of solidarity with other Occupies. Using it made the GA into a kind of sacred experience. Even so, having it prohibited would only be an issue if the city were to also prohibit bullhorns.

But that sentiment was quickly de-twinkled. “I strongly disagree,” said a voice from the edge of the crowd. The speaker was quickly given some room, and Sue recognized her as the woman who had been minding the bookstand. “That’s a slippery slope,” she continued. “What restriction would you bow to next? That you couldn’t conduct an action either?”

Sue self-consciously raised gun fingers. “Under this rule,” she said when recognized by orange-vest, “you might not be able to anyway, if it involved concerted action by more than ten people.”

The moderator gestured at the woman. “Would you like to respond, Natalie?”

Occupy’s librarian nodded, and took a few steps towards the center. “There’s something else here, too: a pattern of capitulation. Every time we accede to some new indignity, those in power are emboldened to go further, and we become more used to yielding power. It’s like a Maxwell’s Demon for confidence, stealing it from us and feeding it to them.”

“Then you’d want to oppose this rule on principle?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to help coordinate the response?”

Natalie frowned for a moment in indecision, but then brightened. “Of course.”

“Good.” Then he turned towards Sue. “And what about you, Ms. Winston? Will you be putting some skin into this game, or do you intend to watch from a safe distance?”

For Sue, it was as if the whole complicated mess was suddenly distilled down to its essence. She’d stepped into government service almost on a whim, and until now it had mostly consisted of mundane tasks such as meetings, reports and speaking with her constituents. This was different, and it was exhilarating. “It’s funny,” she said, “when I came down here, all I was really thinking about was my brother. If there was going to be trouble, I didn’t want him to get hurt. But now, I see there’s a whole lot more to this. And yes, I intend to be here with you tomorrow.”

Natalie had moved through the crowd, and was now standing in front of her. “Tell me something,” she said earnestly, “how did you think a bunch of non-violent people could endanger a cop in riot gear?”

“To be honest, thinking didn’t really enter into it. I was just worried about my brother. Yeah, I know. It was irrational. But what can I do? He’s family.”

“So is everyone here, in a manner of speaking.”

A handful of people followed the two women back to the library. And although they were supposed to be developing a formal response to the new rule, they ended up talking more about the unintended effects that it could have beyond the Occupy. The problems were legion, and they were ludicrous: cheerleaders at football games, call-and-response sessions at churches and political rallies, and on and on. Clearly, the mayor hadn’t thought this through, but there seemed every possibility that he would have his police force use it to thwart the Occupy anyway. Eventually, the rest of them wandered off, leaving only Sue and her new friend.

When Natalie was asked to relate the proposal, she studied the gathering for a long moment before speaking. “What we are doing right now,” she said, “will be a violation of the city’s new rule tomorrow. It will be illegal. But so is any act of civil disobedience. The difference is that for them to arrest us for speaking as we are right now, they will have to violate our space. We will not be blocking a street, or preventing anyone from conducting their business. What we will be doing is exercising out constitutional right to speak and to assemble. There is nothing more central to what this movement is about.”

She didn’t continue right away, so the moderator asked if she had a proposal to place before the GA.

“We propose,” she said, pausing to glance at Sue, “that starting tomorrow, in the interest of solidarity, everyone participates in the People’s Mike. Everyone.” She paused again, but this time it was for effect. “If the mayor wants to stage a mass arrest, we’ll force him to take as large a group as possible. Spread the word any way you can. Get people down here in the morning. One more thing: when the arrests start, we’ll want to be streaming it live, with backup. If they take one speaker, someone else takes over. If they cuff someone who was streaming, someone else picks up the slack. The I.W.W. pioneered this strategy. If you’re not familiar with the Wobblies, visit the Occupy Library. I’ve got several books about them.”

Sue had something to say as well. “Remember: Mayor Svanstrom is imposing this unilaterally. He did not consult city council. He’s pressing the police into this without oversight, as if they were his private army. We want to keep him in the spotlight on this. The police are not our enemy.”

Once the GA had concluded, much of the encampment buzzed with activity. A discussion of Wobbly history and tactics broke out near the library. Others called friends and relatives, sent out emails, and arranged for more people to join the tech team. When three uniformed officers walked into the site shortly after midnight to distribute announcements about the rule, those who were still awake fell silent and just watched. Sue walked directly to the first of them.

“What’s this about, officer?” she said innocently, taking one of the fliers while the other two officers continued past.

“It’s an announcement, Councilwoman Winston. We’ll be enforcing a new rule down here in the morning.”

“This is pretty harsh,” she said after reading the notice. “Mayor Svanstrom must be pretty confident that this rule of his would stand up in court.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am. We just enforce the law. Just ask your—” The officer straightened at a sudden sound from further in the encampment, his hand instinctively by his hip.

Sue spun around just in time to see a shredded flier settle to the ground. A young man was belligerently facing down a uniformed policewoman, who calmly held out another. This time, he crumbled it in his raised fist. Natalie, book in hand, raced to intervene. After stepping between them, she apologized to the policewoman, and then led him away while talking about the importance of remaining non-violent in the face of challenges.

“I think they’ve got the idea,” the first officer called out. “Let’s go.”

Once the scene had calmed, Sue rejoined Natalie and got a few hours’ fitful sleep on a borrowed bedroll. The encampment was already swarming when she woke up. People had begun arriving at four-thirty, but the pace really picked up just before seven. While breakfasting on bagels and orange juice that someone had brought in, the two women wandered the grounds, listening in on numerous discussions about how to handle the inevitable hand-offs when the police pull someone out. The newly enlarged tech team was wrestling with visibility issues when they approached.

“If this goes down anything like it did at the capital yesterday,” one person said, “the cops will go after the live-streamers first. For them, it’s a matter of containment. So we’ll have to stay out of sight until we’re needed.”

“Fine,” said another, but how do the rest of us know who goes next? If a bunch of us de-cloak at once, they’ll grab us all.”

“Well,” a third piped up, “we could set the order now.”

Natalie stepped in. “If this was a more structured situation, that might work. But the police are going to want to keep us off-balance. If they see that we’ve got some set plan, they’ll do their best to short-circuit it.”

As Sue listened, memories of council meetings overlaid the proceedings, and she began to wonder whether the very orderliness of those meetings was instrumental in why the power brokers could control them so easily. She resolved to be more disruptive the next time a session was hijacked.

“—but then, who’s in charge? Who’s the leader?” someone pleaded in frustration.

“Nobody,” Natalie said, stepping closer. “And that may be part of the problem. We keep telling ourselves that this is a leaderless movement, but what we really need to see it as is a leaderful one. What if we had one signal for—” She broke off at the sound of someone calling out ‘Code Blue’. Police had been spotted.

Sue turned around, and saw several uniformed officers arrayed along the opposite side of the street. A moment later, a young male voice called for a Mike Check, and the closest officer spoke into the mike clipped to his collar. “This is it,” she muttered.

Simultaneously, a scattering of voices in the encampment echoed the request, and a double-line of armored police strode down the center of the street, towards the encampment. When they reached the curb, they spread out, stopping a double arms length apart across the open side of the vacant building lot. By this time, the Peoples’ Mike had assembled opposite the police, and stood nervously waiting for someone to speak. Dozens of cell phones were held aloft to record whatever might happen next.

Sue knew instantly which of the identically outfitted officers was her brother, and strode purposefully towards him. While the murmuring behind her spoke of indecision on the part of the person who had launched the mike check, she spoke to Peter. “You’re going to be ordered to arrest me, you know.”

“I’d rather not, sis.”

“You’re not going to be given that choice. As long as you’re wearing that badge, you’re obligated to obey your superior officers, and that includes Mayor Svanstrom.”

There was another call for a Mike Check, but this time it was Natalie. Sue glanced over her shoulder, and then spoke quickly. “Have you looked at your fellow officers, Peter? You’re all dressed alike. And in a few seconds, you’re all going to be doing the exact same thing: arresting us. Why is that okay, and us saying ‘mike check’ is not?”

“Good morning, officers,” the librarian said, and the crowd echoed.

“Do you feel threatened by me?” Sue asked, poking herself with a finger. “By her?”

“We are non-violent,” Natalie said in a loud, clear voice. This time, Sue joined the echo.

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter stage whispered. “This is my job.”

The police commander blew his whistle, and his line of armored officers each dutifully grabbed the nearest person echoing the speaker, and started to cuff them. Including Peter.

“Look at your fellow officers,” Sue said as her brother grabbed her arm and turned her around. “How many of you are there? Twenty? Thirty?”

“We are not threatening you.” This time it was someone else. Natalie had been grabbed as well.

Sue repeated the words as loudly as she could while Peter fastened her wrists together with plastic straps. When he was finished, she faced him again and said, “If this law applies equally to everyone, you’ll also have to arrest one another!”

He stared at her for a moment, and then glanced left and right, at the row of armored officers in what might just as well be lockstep action.

“But you,” the new speaker continued, “are violating our right to peaceably assemble.”

Sue echoed, addressing the words directly to Peter this time. Then she added, “Is that why you joined the force?”

He smiled weakly at her, and nodded. “Okay, sis. I get it. I get it.”

“So now what?”

Peter stirred the air with a finger. “Turn around, Suki, and I’ll cut you loose.”

“Thanks.”

After freeing her, he raised his face shield and slipped the helmet off. While the officers to his left and right looked on, he stepped across an invisible line and stood beside his sister, facing into the street. “Are you still worried about me getting hurt out here?”

She rapped his armor a few times. “Not as long as they let you keep that outfit.”

THE END

 (The story continues in “Making it Count“)

Setting:

We’re at the GA of some Occupy to determine how to respond to the latest restriction imposed by the city, limiting the number of people who can do or say anything at once. The new rule was issued in response to an event that scared the powers-that-be in this burg: they were freaked by how effective a concerted action can be, because of something another Occupy pulled off, and they didn’t want it to happen in their city. The other Occupy was in a larger city, with a larger contingent of occupiers. That city had already imposed this rule, and this city is following suit through coordination of their mayors (and power-brokers). The city we’re in can be referred to by a nickname, and the larger city can be the (unnamed) state capitol, so readers will be able to identify with it more easily. The city did not announce the new rule publicly, thinking that it wouldn’t affect most people, without realizing that sporting events (for example) would be covered as well as protests. But politicians rarely think things through.

GA Procedures:

We don’t have to show the entire meeting process, but it’s useful to know what they are. The Moderator composes the Order of the Day, and makes sure that everyone gets a chance to speak. He or she is assisted by the Shadow Moderator. Both people are chosen by and from the Facilitation Committee. (Moderator changes off for each GA session.) Meetings start with a Welcome message, and the Principles of Solidarity, then the hand gestures are explained. [Hands up and open for applause or agreement; one hand up, then swung in front of mouth for disagree; two fingers for Point of Clarity or a question; triangle sign for Point of Process; crossed fists for Hard Block.] Next, Announcements from Committees, Affinity Groups and individuals. (An Affinity Group is a committee that has not been formalized by the GA.) Proposals are next, first from Committees, then Affinity Groups, and finally from individuals. During a discussion, a Stackperson (in some Occupies, wearing an orange vest) manages the order of the people who wish to speak.

Timing:

If this issue were raised as a proposal, it would have to be concrete, and have a what, how, why and when already worked out. We’re not that far along yet, since the focus here is on the discussion of how to respond to the new restrictions. Unless… a proposal has been made, and we’re discussing whether to accept it.

So we could be at a number of stages in the process. The issue would first be raised as an Announcement. At this point, the person speaking describes the city’s new rule, and it starts a heated discussion. But because the rule is to take effect the next morning, there’s little time to go through the usual process. There’s a hard deadline looming: somehow, the GA must decide on what to do tonight.

Players:

Our focus character is the person who raises the issue. Either s/he was told about it by someone in the loop, or this is a city employee risking his/her job by coming down to the GA. If it’s a city employee, is it someone with a public reputation? That would give them psychological clout. If s/he was involved in the process of making such rules, s/he would likely have objected, and was overruled. That would be the impetus to go to the GA and warn the Occupy. (Fleshing out the players will be the next step in this process.)

The Conflict and Resolution:

So far, all we have is a civil conflict between those who would settle for finding a way to live with the new rule, and those who would rather make this a public fight and risk being arrested. The people arrayed on either side can be a random cross-section of the Occupy. Does anything aside from the discussion happen? If not, it’s going to be just talking heads. It’s going to need some action to make it visceral, which means that either the discussion gets out of hand, or something intrudes on the peaceful process of reaching consensus. I’ll have to revisit this once I know who the players are.

As to a resolution for the story, there are several paths we could take. They could agree to propose abiding by the new rule; they could agree to propose ignoring the new rule; they could reach an impasse and ask for the GA to vote on it; they could propose that those who wish to ignore the new rule can do so without the support of the Occupy. Should the story end with the call for a vote? That’s a provocative ending, but certainly not a satisfying one. On the other hand, it could entice some reader responses. Assume this ending for now. (The course that my stories take is frequently revealed in the writing, so I won’t worry about this for now.)

+—–+—–+—–+

[Note: You can read the short story itself, "Crossing the Line"]

It’s an interesting challenge. I mean, think about it. What would put you in a bind over whether to roll over or not? Say you’re on the job, and word comes down from management that all of the people who actually do the work are getting their pay cut by 10 percent. People who had previously been told that it was illegal for them to unionize. Technical workers. (The incident inspired one of my stories.) When that happened at the contract house where my wife worked, a few people quit, some mounted a protest, but most everyone grumbled and swallowed the insult. Every one of those people had signed an employment contract that included the pay rate, and now they all knew that such contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Those between corporations are sacrosanct, but when it’s an employee, it’s just a damn piece of paper. It’s an old story. The people, companies and issues change, but the dynamic stays the same. Unions are important. That’s why they’re being crushed. It demoralizes the citizenry.

For the story, though, I needed an equivalent situation that the Occupy would have to deal with, something that would reduce their effectiveness but which still left a way to exist, albeit in a weakened state. It’s nothing new for them, though. That’s been the pattern all along. Bullhorns were prohibited, and the People’s Mike arose in its place. Structures were prohibited, and the occupiers made do. Standing to protest was prohibited, and orbiting marches were developed. Each time, the Occupy accepted the restriction in order to survive, and each time the confidence of the occupiers was sapped a bit more, until a change of focus started to bubble up, displacing the focus on maintaining a physical presence at some site or other with a commitment to occupy the national debate.

But this is a story, so I can set it at any point in the life of the Occupy. And what struck me was that at the heart of the occupy movement is the same force that ignited the union movement: the need to act as one. People acting in concert, marching, protesting, speaking out, being the People’s Mike. And that, from the perspective of the Confidence Vampire, is a tasty nexus to bite, because sapping that force could suck the life out of both movements at once.

What if the city acted to prohibit groups of more than 10 from acting or speaking in unison? That stabs at the heart of any kind of physical mass action. No marches. No die-ins. You couldn’t even use the People’s Mike effectively under that restriction. And the implications go all the way to complete lock-down and a police state. That’s the sort of thing that could ignite a conflagration. And yet some people would still look for ways to politely acquiesce. But it would make a hell of a discussion at the General Assembly.

+—–+—–+—–+

[Note: You can read Story-prep 4, or the short story itself, "Crossing the Line"]

In the morning, I awoke with some questions to ask that idea, starting with what sort of a situation could show how the vampire would gain strength from a prospective transfer of confidence, and then deprive the creature of it. After all, that is essentially an internal struggle. The questions piled up as I was preparing breakfast, so I ordered the idea to walk the spatula as I reached out to flip the bacon. I dangled it over the sizzling grease in hopes of getting it to confess its secret, but to no avail. Frustrated, I shelved the interrogation for the moment, muttering to myself that this story idea was a tough nut to crack.

That’s when it struck me. I smiled with the realization that the metaphor I’d chosen just happened to hold the answer to my first question, because the walnut in my mind protected the meat of the issue in a hard shell: that shell could either be a person or a group. If it was a group, the people in that group could externalize their individual struggles as they argued among themselves.

The vampire’s mark, then, would be a group of some sort. That could mean any sort of cohesive gathering of people, from a neighborhood or club, to a company or association, to a nation. Next, I needed to narrow the focus to some event, and to the people who are directly involved. Before breakfast, I’d watched a TED talk about fighting with non-violence. In it, Scilla Elworthy spoke about three types of intimidation, each playing in a specific channel of communication. These channels reinforce each other, conspiring to stifle the will to act. Thinking about it, I realized that the drama here is in the moment that the person or group decides whether to speak up and violate the politeness taboo.

By staging the decision as a group consensus, the interplay of forces can be personified, showing rather than telling. As my wife pointed out after breakfast, this process can only play out in a group that is not directed top-down, since in that situation the choice would be imposed by leadership, rather than being a consensus decision. She specifically called out the Occupy as an example.

So… the story takes place at the General Assembly of some Occupy. The next step is to determine what situation they have experienced, to which they now have to decide whether and how to respond. The usual tactic used against Occupy is violence, and the threat of violence. The chosen methodology used by Occupy is one of non-violent resistance and outreach. They have lots of practice, in lots of situations, so for this to be interesting it would have to be a novel situation that the group is split over whether to respond or not. What sort of a challenge are they fielding?

+—–+—–+—–+

[Note: You can read Story-prep 3, or the short story itself, "Crossing the Line"]

I got bit by this one a few days back, and it was most of a day before the itch set in. I poked at it a few times, and dug at it a bit, but I couldn’t get it out. It had left its mark, and the damn thing started to grow. Now I suppose I’m going to have to bend to its will, do what it wants. Sigh.

I don’t even recall where I was when the thought hit, only that I was somewhere on the Internet. Fortunately, I saved a link, so I could at least go back and track it back to its lair, a recent paper by Florida State University assistant professor of psychology Joyce Ehrlinger. According to the description I found, she posited that people become overconfident because social norms of politeness prevent others from giving negative social feedback.

So there it is. That’s what infected me. That’s the irritant that’s festering in my head. If it was just a song, I could displace it by remembering the Muppet version of “It’s a Small World, After All”. Yeah. And if I were a clam, I could make a pearl around it to stop the itching. But I’m not. No, this thing wants a stage to strut on. It wants me to wrap a story around it.

That’s how most of my stories have come to be. Now there’s this one. Okay, so what do we have? I generally begin by casting about to see what sticks to the idea. My first thought, not being a psychologist, was that this might be a way to understand how other overbearing personality types develop, and how power is ceded to bullies through politeness. So, what sort of story falls out of that?

It seems to me that there are lots of parallels to this in history. Appeasement comes easily to mind — the strategy of giving a national bully what it wants in the hope that it will be satisfied and leave you alone. I suspect that people’s reluctance to confront bullies comes from this politeness ethic. On the other side of things, there’s also the ‘don’t negotiate with terrorists’ meme, which carries the idea that by entering into a negotiation, you are accepting the behavior as normal.

In the context of commerce, a company can easily get overconfident of its power in the marketplace when it doesn’t encounter resistance to its activities. For example, some big company with a nasty reputation announces a product in a new area. Smaller companies already in that field head for the hills to protect themselves by refocusing their business to other areas rather than try to compete with the 800 pound gorilla. The new product may be crap, but the bigger company’s reputation precedes them, and other companies respond to their expectations rather than to the actual new product.

This is what the Democratic Party has done time and time again. When threatened with confrontation by a self-righteous religiously dogmatic Republican attack, they fold their tent and slip away rather than stand their ground.

In all of these cases, it feels like it’s a lack of self-confidence masquerading as politeness that drives the participant from engaging in confrontation. I gather that the researchers assert that this behavior pumps up the confidence of the unchallenged party. Metaphorically, it’s a transfer of confidence, as if by a confidence vampire.

So what sort of story does that suggest?

+—–+—–+—–+

[Note: You can read Story-prep 2, or the short story itself, "Crossing the Line"]

I’d accepted the offer to attend the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference last week for the synchronicity of it, not because I had a manuscript to pitch to the assembled agents and editors. My choice of talks to attend was therefore not geared towards that goal, but rather to give me fresh perspective on what I’ve been doing, and how I was doing it.

In a talk about short stories, the presenter enumerated Setting, Characters, Point of view, Plot and Theme, but the way she approached it, the idea was to pick your setting and characters, and then throw a curve ball to instigate the action. The plot then grows naturally from the cascading effects of that action. It all made perfect sense, but as I sat there, something just didn’t feel right.

In another talk, the presenter spoke about showing rather than telling the hidden parts of a story, such as people’s emotions, or the things that a reader might be able to deduce from what you show them. But as valuable as what he said was, he was specifically talking about the mechanics of presenting the story in words, which is the surface level of the process. Something seemed to be missing.

Afterwards, when I sat down to thank my benefactor, I realized what had been bothering me: I don’t write that sort of fiction. My stories are not simple vignettes about a character in some random situation facing adversity. Such stories are pleasant as far as they go, but I find them pointless. I’m far more interested in showing, through a story, an idea, or a way of seeing the world. That’s probably what the first presenter meant by Theme, but in her schema, it was anything but the starting point for crafting a story. Instead, the discussion about theme was focused on boiling down what the story was about, as an analysis of what had been crafted.

What I do is start with the idea I want to explore. From there, I play around with possible ways that the idea could be realized in a series of events, and craft a situation that shows the idea in the form of how that situation unfolds. That gets me to the setting and initial circumstances. From there, I doodle with what sort of character might be in the situation I’ve postulated, and why he or she is there. With a setting and a main character, I ask myself what happens from there, to set up the immediate actions that we open on, and then flesh out who the character is, finishing with his or her name. At this point, the ‘reality’ of the character’s world starts to jell, and I sketch the very beginning of the event cascade I’m about to unleash. That’s when I start writing the story, and I let the world create itself as I go.

So it’s not just a matter of showing. It’s what you’re showing. And there are deeper things than emotions that can be shown in the form of stories. There are ideas.

But then, something strange happened. A few of the stories that I thought I’d finished came back to haunt me, and demanded that they be turned into a series. This made my decision to offer the stories for free even more interesting, because I pursued the idea purely out of curiosity, with no thought of whether they fit the needs of whatever publication might have purchased the first one. One series was even based on some minor characters in my second novel, “Burnout Fever”, which I’ve self-published as a Nook ePub at Barnes and Nobel.

As you might imagine, going to a writers conference, where I could attend seminars and pitch a manuscript at agents and editors, was the furthest thing from my mind. I’d even passed on attending the Westercon 65, the roving western-US regional science fiction convention, which was held earlier this month near where I live, because it didn’t pique my interest, even though I’d been the Director of Programming at Westercon 50 in 1997, and crafted the time-travel theme of that event.

So naturally, I got a phone call from my doctor one night last week, and it wasn’t about my health. She’d bought a membership to the conference before becoming disillusioned with the project she was working on, and decided not to go. It was too late to get a refund, so she asked if I’d be interested in going instead. Much to my surprise, I said yes.

One of the events I attended on the first day of the conference was about how to write a pitch. It was intended to help those interested in presenting their ideas to agents and editors during the conference, and included time to write and try pitches with whoever was sitting nearby. I knew I wasn’t going to make a pitch, but took out pad and pen anyway, just to play with the idea. Here’s what I came up with:

Barry Lieber watched helplessly when his wife Melanie’s mind slipped a cog and trapped her in a mental hall of mirrors, where every conversation had to be about angels. In “Burnout Fever”, Barry resolves to move Heaven and Earth to find a cure, or at least an explanation. But Melanie wasn’t the only victim, and the key to the salvation of both Heaven and Earth lay in the reason why the angels in her sketchbook were rapidly going to hell.

“The Keeper’s Tale”
by
P. Orin Zack

Part I

Tearfully staring into emptiness, my tombstone dreams of ages past, of a time long since dimmed to myth when I was given my charge. My priestly duty was to guard the Tower, “place of the Gods”, until their return.

The legends had said it was built of magic, dust, and light, and that the Tower had stood, untouched by time, for longer than even time itself. How it was built had been long since forgotten. Yet it stood, and only the mythic caution against the Priests leaving it remained.

I was old then, and there was not another to take my place. I had roamed the grounds, wondering — always wondering, and searching for some remnant of Power in the great Rotunda which would help me to understand the deep mysteries of the Tower. One such day I chanced upon a stone. It was a stone of learning, for it talked to me inside my head, and its words were of the ancient days in the Valley, and of the glory, power, and beauty once surrounding the Tower. What it did not say was how that glory had vanished.

As I wandered the huge vaulted chambers, I began to imagine that I saw images of the time of light spoken of by the stone. My nights were filled with visions of those times, and many were the painful mornings spent vainly trying to re-enter those fleeting dreams. But wishing was not enough. For as much as I learned from that stone, I remained unable to perform any of the Old Magic. For many months, I fought the frustration of having the knowledge, yet being unable to use it. Finally, I gave up trying. I tossed the stone into a gap in the stonework of the Rotunda wall and tried to forget that I had ever found it. Yet it called out to me, lurking there in its dark corner, and I had nowhere to turn. At last, out of desperation, I fell to sitting for days in the single untarnished seat upon the dais, surrounded by the silence of the great Rotunda, grimly contemplating nothingness.

It was then that two visitors appeared. A woman whose manner spoke of the green lands beyond strode stiffly into the echoing stillness of the Rotunda. Behind her, standing barely within the circle of the Rotunda, stood a young girl with a dark and piercing look. I watched as she carefully examined the walls around her, and marvelled that such a young one could be so unaccountably comfortable in those ancient chambers. A word of welcome was clearly in order, but as there hadn’t been a visitor in the Valley for longer than I could remember, I sat and stared in silence.

“Old man!”

I drew my gaze back across the tiled floor to the woman. Her bearing was stark, her stance the uncomfortable puffery of one who clearly wished she was elsewhere.

“Do you hear me, old man?”

“Yes. Yes. What is it you want of me?”

She made a short gesture with her thumb, indicating the girl, who had cautiously approached the dais. “My daughter there needs to have some sense beat into her.” A heavy breath, and an outstretched hand. “I have tried. Gods know I’ve tried. She has these — these ‘dreams’, and she acts like they’re more important than her chores.”

The girl turned her head to look at her mother from the corner of her eye while she idly fingered the surface of the dais platform.

“And what, dear woman, do you expect me to do about it? I am a priest, not a nursemaid. Do you think that I have nothing to do here but wait around for people like you to dump your uncivilized offspring on me? And the idea of bringing her to the Valley for —”

“Now you just hold on right there! Priest? How can you stand there and call yourself a Priest? All tucked away in this convenient little valley? Sole surviving member of a burned out old monastery? The Priests, old man, are out there in the real world. They’re busy, all right. Busy making little models of this place for people to pray to. Those priests, if you will, have been making quite a name for you out there. While you sit here and —”

“While I sit here and what?”

The girl’s attentions were solely on me. She seemed to be waiting for — for a sign of something from me.

The woman gathered up her cloak in her fists for a moment, while she closed her eyes tightly and pursed her lips. Then, releasing her cloak, she looked sternly into my eyes and spoke, in a calm, unwavering, and very controlled voice. “While you sit here and act out the final scene of a story that ended long ago.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Come on, old man. You can’t be that dense. The legends about the last Priest to leave the Tower, of course. You know what they say.”

“That the magic will remain as long as there is someone here to guard it. What of it?”

“When you die, old man, what then?”

Looking up for a second, I noticed that the girl had gone. “I had hoped there would be another to take my place.”

“Doesn’t look like there’s going to be anyone, does there?”

“No.”

“Well? The priests out there say that it doesn’t matter anyway. They say that the magic was just that — magic. They can get along quite well without you, or this place. Only, my daughter doesn’t see it that way. And believe me, that isn’t easy to live with.”

As I sat there, I thought about the words of the stone. What had once been grandeur was now legend. Not even the Priestly training of my youth could clear the mists from the truth, and the myths told by the people outside were even more clouded. What I had learned from the stone would sound utterly beyond belief to her. My own preconceptions were, at least, not totally divorced from the truth. I had accepted what the stone had said, but with great difficulty. Then what of her? I could tell from her tone that she still secretly believed that these wonders were Godly works, and that one day they would return to them. She had made that first step, and perhaps I could help her with the second.

At the risk of strengthening her belief in my foolishness, I hastened to explain what I had learned. I painted word pictures of the visions I saw, but as I did, I began to miss them all the more.

I told her in quiet tones of glistening, shimmering words, how there once had been wisdom to match those works, and more. She grew disturbed as I detailed the facts behind her Gods, but I continued. Slowly, her disturbed countenance faded into horror as I spoke. My story wound around legends and tales of mythical beings, past times long forgotten, and through uncounted years of glory. When I told her that the Gods she knew so well were but creatures like us, she looked at me as though through mountains of pity. Of the magic in the Tower, she could but shake her head, for there was no magic left in her world.

Then I stopped. I could see that my words were not enough as she slowly turned from the dais and walked out into the daylight. And though it had brought me nothing but frustration, I went to the chink in the Rotunda wall and pulled out the stone. When I found her again, she was in the garden with her daughter.

“Hold this for a moment.”

The stone would not speak in her, or perhaps she was deaf to it. She turned it over in her hands and passed it to her daughter. The young girl suddenly looked toward the Tower. I knew that she was hearing the words forming in her head, and I watched her face raptly, nearly reading the story from it.

The Tower is made of curdled light, of thought invested with form. It was built by men, though men no longer remember how it was done. By men it was built, but not like men of today. In those times, men were different. They knew of magic, but to them it was not magic. It was a part of their world as they understood it. They had but to turn their wills to a purpose to see that purpose done. I know this is so because I was there. I am there still, for that time is not a time at all, and only through time can one leave it.

She seemed to accept it as a story of wonder, and as such was not bound to regard it as real. But real it was, and she continued to listen.

Long ago the Tower was built, and its builders thought that it would serve their will. But they neglected to recall that glory gained by birth is all to easily lost. Those who followed did not know how to build even a small thing in that manner, that they could know of its worth. And they forgot.

They forgot.

They forgot, and entered the realms of time. And as that is the only way to leave that time that was not a time, they could not return. But they did not care. They had their lives, or so they thought, and cared not for the past. The future. The future and the present were for them, and in believing that, they grew deeper into time. But the further away from that place out of time they went, the less they knew of it, and slowly they began to believe the stories they told about it. The stories grew. And with every new telling, the truth grew less and less recognizable.

By that time, the woman had gone. But the girl still listened, and so I did not follow her mother. Instead I sat with her as she listened to the tale unfold. As I had done in the months past, she learned of the great houses of learning on the banks of the River-Of-Life, to which came people of every age and from many worlds. The Great Winged Messenger, retold the stone, brought seekers after knowledge from the many worlds in the darkness of space to dwell in the Houses of Light. Returning to their homes with what they had been taught, and with the wisdom to properly use it, these celestial visitors brought an uncountable wealth to their peoples.

The girl laughed a sparkling laugh, accustomed as she must have been to the stories of her nursery, and grew comforted by the warmth of the afternoon sun. Her smile revealed her fascination, and she gripped the stone even tighter.

While she was so engrossed, I slipped back to my quiet place in the central chamber. In my exhaustion, I fell into a welcome sleep. I dreamed then as I had so many times in those days, of the old times when the people lived in the valley.

I found myself entering the chamber, feeling more awake than not, though I fully realized I was in fact asleep. It had disturbed me at first, that seeming wakefulness while fully asleep. But the dreams comforted me, And I grew to treat them as real as they seemed.

The familiar fitted-stone walls of the Rotunda were blanketted by a strange hazy glowing fog which seemed to have a life of its own. It shimmered, and shadows cast themselves through and around the haze, giving it a constantly changing visual texture reminiscent of ripple shadows on a submerged stone. Robed figures came and went in some direction I could only guess at, each one seeming to suddenly appear and vanish nearly unnoticed by the others.

I crossed the sparkling tiled floor toward the dais, and was once again struck by the peculiar way that the inlaid patterns changed as my dream-self moved across them. The gaps in the walls, which I knew as holes to nothingness, revealed scenes from other places. From one I could see a city reaching upwards into clear blue skies, while its neighbor revealed a dark, storm covered seaside, and yet another showed a field of unearthly flowers rolling gently across a grassy hillside.

My attention was broken suddenly by a stillness in the room. One lone cloaked figure stood directing the head of his staff towards the chair upon the dais. He then brought it around, drawing its head across the silver and gold colored tile before him. A pattern formed around the staff’s head from the sparks which resulted, and they remained in position as it moved. He then pointed the spark-encircled metal head of his staff at a suspended crystal centering the dome. Both the crystal and the sparkling staff took on a brilliant glow.

When he had finished, I continued crossing the floor to the great raised chair, and saw that the dais was slightly different than the one I had so often slept on. For whereas the one I knew so well had but one level, this one had three. The first was as I remembered it, but a second rose from it, half as high as the first, and a third, again half as high as the second. The gently purring golden fur was the same, but the chair centering it wasn’t. This one was almost not there, as though it were built of gossamer. As I neared the platform, I turned around to face the entrance again, and found myself waking from my sleep. The girl was seated at my feet.

I looked at her for a time, wondering whether she understood what the stone had been telling her. She still had the stone in her hand, and was gripping it in trembling fingers when I put my own out for it. She loosened her grip and turned it over twice as she studied it again. Then she returned it to me.

The rock felt — different. It had the contented feeling of something finally accomplished, and for the first time since I had first picked it up, it remained silent as I held it.

“It’s happy now.” she said suddenly.

“The rock?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She paused then, her eyes darting about the room, after which she said, “It did what it needed to do. It’s happy now. It can rest.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but something had certainly happened to the rock. She kept looking at me, half expecting me to have said something, I imagine. She knew something that I did not. I, with my priestly training that told me only another version of the truth the rock had held. I, who had stayed with the Tower for the long years of my life. I had found the stone months before, and in scant hours it had given up its power to tell tales entirely.

“What did it do?” I asked her softly.

She swallowed rather loudly, as I recall, and then forced a few short, heavy breaths before answering. This was clearly not an easy task for her.

“It told me —” Her expression seemed to blank out for a moment. Then she just sat there, staring at the wall with an odd smile on her face.

“Go on.”

“It told me that I was, well, that I was right all along.”

“Right? Right about what?”

She tilted her head at that, then looked squarely at me. A small smile crept across her face, and she began talking very quietly.

“I have friends here, you know.”

“Friends?”

“Yes. I have been here before. In my dreams, I visit the valley often. But there are some things missing. Did you know that?”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The chair, for instance. In my dreams, it has a soft furry covering. And it stands higher than it does here.”

She must have continued on for a while after that, but I didn’t hear a word of it. Her description of the chamber was exactly as I saw it in my own dreams. All I could think of was the pain of being so close to the secret, and yet not understanding it.

She fell silent then, and looked idly about the chamber.

“Is that what the stone told you was right?”

“I didn’t only stay in the rotunda, though. My friends here showed me all kinds of wonderful things. They taught me how to do some of the Old Magic.”

“Did they.”

“Yes. And I practiced what I learned, and even tried to show my friends at home how to do it.”

“Magic? Like what?”

“Nothing big. Just how to make cuts heal faster and things like that. But for some reason, none of them could get the hang of it.”

“That is a shame.”

“It was more than a shame. It bordered on heresy.”

“Heresy? But the legends are full of such things. How could that be a heresy?”

But she didn’t answer. In the silence of the rotunda, I could almost hear her shudder.

Part II

Her dreams, as she described them, were clearly about the elder days, when people understood the magic that was in the Tower. She literally glowed as she told me all about the incredible dreams she had had. She said that she was never before free to talk about them openly as she was doing with me. After what seemed like hours, and it might well have been, she fell once again silent.

When I asked if she meant that the stone told her that her dreams had been factual, she said that was so, and went off on another tangent. She told me about what she had said to people because of those dreams. She was wise in what she knew, but foolish in her use of it. Her young, agile mind had gone beyond what she saw in her dreams, and began to work out the basis for the workings of the ancient magic. She secretly talked with her friends, teaching them how to pracice the Old Magic. Some of them were untrustworthy, and soon their parents became outraged. They were not prepared to accept her ideas, and instead, attacked her for them. She told me that her parents at last began to keep her away from other people, and she dealt with them as she could. With her help, they decided to be rid of her, bundling her out of the village, and up to the old valley of the Tower. She was happy because of it, because now she was in a place where the old magic that was not magic had been practiced and understood by all. She would stay, she told me, and help me to take care of the old magical Tower, if I would allow her to. If not, she would leave.

I was silent for a long while after she had finished speaking. I thought of what she might be able to help me with. She had more knowledge of the old times than did I myself. Even with my training, my understanding was poor at best. Her mind was young and agile, and perhaps there was still a chance to bring the magic back. I told her that she could stay, but that she would have to help me. I wanted to learn what she had learned, I told her, and then waited for her answer.

She was overjoyed, and began dancing about the chamber. I watched her silently wheel about the glistening tiled floor for long minutes before I noticed something extraordinary. The tile of the floor was behaving as it had in my dreams, changing with the fluidity of the dance which my young friend was performing. This was truly a special girl, for nowhere but in my dreams had I seen the glittering gold and silver colors of the floor react in such a manner. I marveled at the magic she brought with her, and my hopes rose as I watched.

“What was all that about?”

“Hmmm?”

“Your dance, if that was what it was. There was some magic about it. Where did to learn to do it?”

“That? I was only fitting myself to the music.”

“Music?”

“Sorry. I forgot. When I’m happy, I hear a sort of music. That’s how I celebrate sometimes. But, uh, I usually have to be careful where I do it. They thought I was possessed or something…”

“Right. Well, when I want to celebrate, I have a feast. Are you hungry?”

“Famished. I haven’t eaten since last night, when we stopped at the inn at Cambert’s Pass.”

“Then, by all means, let’s eat!”

After we had finished a veritable banquet of fruits and one of the flightless birds which I raised for special occasions, we sang and talked until we were both exhausted. We learned all we could about each other. Soon we would begin learning together about our glorious past, and with that happy thought, we each took some needed rest.

Would that I were not so hopeful. For all the hopes that I had, she was not able to teach me what she had learned. I was willing to learn, and she was trying as best she could, but for some reason, I could not make the ideas come together. We tried for weeks, and though I could grasp individual concepts, I was unable to progress beyond them to the underlying structure of the old ways.

My failure so tore at me that I forebore to seek solitude away from the girl, wishing to forget that we had ever met. She remained in the valley with me, but we rarely met except over meals, and then in silence. From afar, I watched as she learned more of the old ways, and began to practice with them. Before many weeks, I was once again reposing upon the dais chair, dreaming of those days, and wishing that I could return to them. I even began to refuse to believe in the power of the Tower.

I was in such a state when another visitor came to the valley. I was enjoying a dream visit to the Rotunda in the old days. A stranger had appeared across the room and slowly approached me. The sounds of his footsteps on the tile reverberated hollowly in the crowded chamber as he walked. He opened his mouth to speak, and —

“Priest, are you awake?” he asked in a quiet, but assertive tone.

Reluctantly regaining wakefulness, I took a quick look at my visitor through bleary eyes and a yawn. My visitor wore finely tailored clothing, and carried himself with an air of importance. I looked quickly around the Rotunda, shaking my head with the oddness of his approach within my dream. Yet, his clothing matched what I had seen a moment, or perhaps ages, before.

“I am now. Who —, who are you?”

“My name is Baron Verston. I —”

“Yes. I have heard of you.” Indeed, I had. My young friend’s stories of the outside world were full of such people. Verston, she had told me, was the hereditary ruler of one of the many cities along the coastline. “What do you want here, so far from the sea?”

“Apparantly your information is dated. I no longer rule the port of Grodak. Some trouble-makers from the mountains to the north came into the city and started a revolt. If you know anything at all about me, then you are aware that I have never ruled by force of arms.”

“Oh, yes. I know about your devious methods. But that doesn’t answer my question. What do you want with me? I am not about to fall for your tricks.” By this time, I had regained my composure, and began to use the tricks which I had been taught. Bearing and tone did a lot to sway an argument.

“As I said, I have never used force to rule. We use much the same techniques, you and I. And, it appears, neither of us are, at the moment, in a position to do anything about it. I was warned never to return to Grodak by the petty knife-wielders that took my home. And you, I would wager, have none of the power which you would like, either.”

“Power? What power does a Priest have?”

“Shall we forego the games? You are alone here in this valley. No longer do the pilgrims come to pray at the Tower. Even those outside that call themselves priests discourage such foolishness. They know how to keep their followers in line as well as we do.”

I sat back heavily in the raised dais chair, and thought a moment about that. He was obviously leading up to some sort of cooperative effort. “Come to the point, man!”

“There are many other cities out there. And I mean to have one of them, with your help. I learned from the revolt in Grodak the value of the priesthood. If we work together, we will each have better control. And you can enjoy the benefits of that power if you leave this valley with me. I can guarantee the wealth and comfort which you so obviously deserve. Together, we —”

“I told you, no games!”

“Very well. What do you think?”

In my bitterness, I found his offer of power to be attractive, but still feared to leave the valley. So deeply was my early training rooted, that I maintained my insistance upon not leaving. He kept tearing at my obedience until finally I began to listen to him from a precarious balance between a life-long habit, and the promise of untold wealth and power.

“Come away,” he said, “the Tower will not fall if you go. It was built by men, and will be here for hundreds of years, if not thousands. Surely you don’t think that it will disappear if you turn your back on it. Buildings are made of stone and sweat, not magic.”

Not magic…not magic. I held my breath as the echo died.

“The people out there are willing to be led, eager to be shown what to believe in. They pursue their priests’ tired stories of ancient grandeur in the vain hope that the gods they cherish will return. It occupies their thoughts, but not deeply, for no god yet has made any difference in the affairs of men, and none is likely to. Not now. Not ever. Come with me, and we shall rule together. The multitudes await their new leader. Come away from this nonsense. Join me and we will grow rich together.”

In the end, I agreed. All I could see were endings. The stone had found it’s rightful student, performed the task it had waited eons for, and fell into a satisfied sleep. There was no way for me to benefit from it. I had spent a lifetime waiting for my successor, but my time had grown short and there was no hope that I could discharge my duties to another. So I left. I took a final walk through the rotunda, pausing only to finger the dais chair one last time, and departed without even bidding the girl goodbye. I did not then regret my decision, for my mind remained focussed on the power and wealth which was soon to be mine.

After some little maneuvering with the rulers of the city, a sprinkling of larceny and murder, and a great deal of gold changed hands, Baron Verson was on his new throne.

I discovered that it was not so much that the people would be led as that they didn’t care who sat on the throne. It did not effect their lives except during times of war, and in the amount of the taxes, so they let the high-born struggle among themselves for what power they could take.

In the months that followed, I concerned myself with the myths of the people, and thought less and less about the valley, the Tower, and the girl. My new life afforded me little time for musing over the lost past, and so I fell to planning the future with a satisfaction borne of comfort.

But my comfort was short-lived. I awoke one night from a dream so devastating that I lay frozen with fear and bathed in a cold sweat until the first light of dawn gave me the strength to move.

The dream concerned happenings in the Rotunda, with the usual comings and goings, magical appointments, and robed figures. But the girl was there as well. She sat upon the dais chair, upon that gossamer chair which looked not to be supportive of even her slight weight. The attentions of the dozen or so figures in the chamber were upon her. She rose from the chair, descended the narrow steps from the third level to the floor, and did a dance like that I had seen. As she whirled about the floor, the tiled patterns shifted and changed with her movements. The room began to fill with other cloaked figures of various sizes and shapes as she continued her dance. Patterns in the tiles merged with others in the haze before the walls, enveloping the room in an ever shifting maze of lines, shapes, and dots. She moved among the figures as she danced, fluidly merging with the movement of spaces formed by their arrivals and departures. They, too, seemed to be a part of the motion in the room. Slowly, the girl wound down her dance, returning to the dais as she stopped, and stood before the platform.

She waited there for a moment, accepting the approval of those around her, and then spoke. I could have sworn that she was directing her comments at me, impossible as it may sound. Her exact words escape me, but her meaning will always remain. She had returned to the old days in the valley. She even explained how she had done it. She said that she was not angry with me for leaving her alone there. She had known that I would, and she wished me happiness with my choice. When she had finished speaking, the image of the Rotunda, the Dais, and all the rest, slowly dissolved into he blackness of the night. At that moment I woke with a strong urge to return to the valley once more and a tearing panic about what I would find.

Shortly after the golden light of dawn spread across the sky, I slipped out of the city and set off towards the Valley of the Tower. It took me some time to gather the will to descend from the last turning at Cambert’s Pass, for that was where I first saw the Valley again. The sight was a deathblow. The Tower was no longer there. It had vanished. There was not a trace of it to be found, neither at the site, nor in the surrounding area. It no longer existed.

Neither did the dais. Nor the chair.

It had been true. The Tower could not remain without someone nearby to believe in it. I felt crushed, and fell to crying, sprawled in the center of the rotunda, on the sand where the dais had stood for untold ages. Without the chair, I could make no use of what the girl had told me. It had been the way to return, if one knew how to use it. And she had used it.

I remained there for many days and nights, until finally, Baron Verston returned. I was nearly dead when he arrived, having had no food and little water for days.

He knelt at my side in silence and looked breathlessly at the debris around us.

“What have I done?” I gasped. The Tower was gone. The Gods could not keep their promise. I had failed.

Baron Verston screamed “This will not be forgotten!” his voice echoing hollowly in my ears as I drew my last breath and the world faded around me.

 +—–+—–+

The valley is completely covered with sand now, and the only marker of its passing stares out across the sands of time. It looks directly at what had once been the great Tower, keeping a hopeless vigil for the return of the Gods who had built it.

Another Tower was built. One of brick and of sweat. The fall of that one is remembered in legend. But of the real Tower, the magical one, all that remains is Ozymandias’ blank stare. Ozymandias, the sphinx.

THE END

Copyright 2012 by P. Orin Zack