If this was the resistance, it was time to start boning up on my Canadian. Most of the people gathered there looked like members of the losing team at a Sunday picnic sack race.
We were in a small room behind the sanctuary. Its paneled wooden walls had been painted white. A large cork bulletin board was covered with overlapping messages affixed to it with bright-colored tacks. A trestle table covered with white paper from a long commercial roll had been pushed against a far wall, just under a colorful lithograph of a benevolent Christ. The Lord appeared to be staring down at a tray of cheese and crackers, bottles of soda and specialty waters, and, fittingly, white wine.
There were about forty people standing in small groups. Several of them looked vaguely familiar, but there was one person I recognized instantly. “We’re glad you’re here,” Congresswoman Martha McDonnell said to me as she grasped my hand with both of hers. After a brief exchange, Howie wandered away, leaving us alone. The congresswoman sat down right next to me and leaned over, making it impossible for anyone else to hear her. “I know this is hard for you to hear, Rollie. We would have invited you to join us a while ago, but to be perfectly honest, we’re not a hundred percent certain about Jenny.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I gave it a few seconds to sink in; instead it floated on the surface of my mind. “That’s total bullshit, Martha. C’mon, are you kidding me?”
“I wish I was,” she said heavily. There was just enough pain in her voice to convince me she was serious. “And believe me, even more than you, I hope I’m wrong. I love Jenny too. At least as much as you do. But things have happened around the office that have forced me to wonder. So until we’re sure, the stakes are just too high.”
How do you respond to an absurd accusation made about the most important person in your life? Maybe I should have walked out right then, but I didn’t. I wanted to hear what McDonnell had to say. I had remained outwardly calm, and to demonstrate that, I closed my eyes and asked in a restrained voice, “What are you talking about?”
McDonnell took hold of Mighty Chair’s arm with both hands, using it for leverage as she leaned closer. “No one loves this country more than Jenny,” she said. “No one. I get that. That’s why she went into government service. Did she tell you her uncle was killed on 9/11?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“He sat at his desk waiting to die, Rollie. He called her aunt to say goodbye. That family has made a big investment in this country.” She actually tapped me gently on my arm as she added, “As you well know. But maybe that’s why it’s so hard for her to see what’s really happening.”
I still didn’t believe her. “Oh, please,” I said, waving away the thought. “Give me an example.”
She hesitated, which I took as a small victory. “It isn’t that easy. There isn’t any one thing. But when I ask her opinion about something the president proposes or has done, her response has always been, ‘Go slow, he’s the president, give him a chance.’”
That struck home. I heard her telling me, “Sometimes it’s necessary.”
“Rollie, I don’t know where she stands right now. Today. But we can’t take any chances. She’ll…”
“She would never betray—”
“Absolutely not,” she snapped, not letting me finish. “Of course not. Not in a million years. Jenny is someone who tries to see the good in everyone. So getting to where we are isn’t going to be easy for her. You know that.
“Rollie,” Martha continued, “we’ll understand if you can’t stay.”
I stayed. We had a much longer discussion than I’m reporting here, but that was the heart of it. My feelings were all jumbled—my loyalty, my love for Jenny crashing headlong into my love for the idea of America. Not only was I being asked to join a semi-organized resistance to the government that I hadn’t known existed, I also was being warned that the woman I loved might not be exactly that person I held so tightly in bed. What was racing through my mind wasn’t just thoughts; the whole damn Indianapolis 500 was thundering in there.
Could I really have been that oblivious? I scoured my memory, trying to pinpoint one moment, one word that might make me question Jenny. The military had trained me to pay attention to small cues that created a large picture: a sudden increase in the frequency with which a soldier left the office for a smoke or bathroom break; unexplained wear on the heels of combat boots; any change in an established pattern or habitual behavior. That awareness had become ingrained in me, but Jenny?
Maybe she didn’t rail against Wrightman as strongly as I did, but that was her nature, her inherent kindness. Remember, Jenny the optimist meets Rollie the pessimist? La-la-la and all that, why can’t we all be friends? I didn’t know how to react to all this. Maybe I should have walked out. That certainly would have changed everything, but whether that would have been for better or for worse, I will never know.
I stayed, but I couldn’t decide if that was an act of courage or cowardice.
Before the program started, several people made a point of introducing themselves to me. First names only for security purposes. Who knew if even those names were real? Among those people was a sparkling young woman with unusually round blue eyes that stood out boldly against her flowing jet-black hair. She looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place her. Her name tag identified her as Laura, so at least for that night she was Laura. She greeted Howie, who was still Howie, who introduced her to me. I remained Rollie; I was too well known in Washington to be anyone else. (Although I did flirt briefly with being Biff for the night; I’ve had an odd affection for that name since I played Biff Loman in a college production of Death of a Salesman.) My mind was much too caught up with Jenny to pay attention to Laura, but I advise you to remember her name. She’ll show up again.
This organization, I learned that night, had sprung up several months earlier. Similar local groups were spreading across the country. It had no name; the consensus being a lack of identity would make it difficult to identify: How could anyone be a member of a group that didn’t consider itself a group? There were no leaders, no central communications, and its financial resources seemed limited to a collection bowl sitting on the table. There wasn’t even a secret handshake. But everyone was asked never to talk about it and certainly never to write about it. It didn’t exist except when it did.
The local groups were linked together loosely by a chain of men and women called “two-staters.” These were people who carried information back and forth between their home state and one neighboring state. The whole operation was essentially a national game of telephone. It was arguably the least efficient means of communications short of smoke signals, but at this stage of development the organization without a name or leadership was still small and contained enough for it to be sufficient. And it provided extraordinary secrecy.
There was no formal program. No schedule of events. No one was urging anyone else to take specific actions. It became clear very quickly this was little more than a like-minded group of people getting together to air their grievances against the government. People stood up and told their stories. I’d attended several AA and NA meetings because I thought it was important to understand addiction, and in structure, this meeting was vaguely similar. An older potbellied man described the growing sense of mistrust in his once-harmonious insurance office as people became reluctant to talk about much other than TV programs, movies, and sports. A woman who described herself as a soccer mom complained that her child was required to recite the New American Pledge in his second-grade class every morning.
The two-stater from Virginia had some disquieting news. The movement was growing so rapidly that the government had become aware of its existence and was beginning to gather intelligence about it. A member of the group had been detained in Springfield, Illinois. Under the new regulations no charges had been filed against him, so it was unclear if his detention had anything to do with his participation in the meetings. War regs allowed law enforcement and, under certain conditions, militia groups, to hold people in custody for an extended period without officially filing charges. Supposedly this allowed the government sufficient time to question potential terrorists before his or her collaborators became aware of that arrest.
My attention kept shifting focus; I’d be listening when suddenly all I could think about was Jenny. Then after a few minutes I’d find myself back in the discussion. As one speaker was outlining the various ways Wrightman might legally use the hundreds of special powers given to the president through the decades by Congress, I found myself wondering if the men who came together in the churches and taverns of Boston 250 years ago to protest the injustices of the king might have felt as impotent and inconsequential as I did at that moment. Did those men, Sam Adams and Hancock and Revere among them, truly believe they could be more than a mosquito bite on the ass of the greatest empire in history? When they started meeting, I remembered from my history courses at Michigan, they had no intention of founding a nation. They didn’t threaten war. They simply wanted their government in England to extend to the colonies the same rights given to its other possessions.
I looked around the room. As much as I tried, I couldn’t imagine Adams and Jefferson in a sack race. (And the name Biff Jefferson did seem to lack the necessary gravitas.) But I was struck by the sincerity of the people there. These were people who understood what was slipping away and wanted to prevent it from happening. During that sweep I caught Laura-for-the-night looking at me quizzically. Too late, she averted her eyes, and then made a show of rubbing them, jutting out her chin and turning toward the speaker.
This particular speaker was advocating the publication of cyber-pamphlets on pop-up pirate sites. The administration had successfully cowed major media outlets into self-censoring content. Broadcast “news” had become so bland, in fact, that at the Pro we laughingly had begun referring to Chuck Todd’s once-incisive Sunday morning show as Meet the Presbyterians.
There was some support in the room for using these pirate sites just as the founding fathers had circulated anonymous pamphlets, to spread information and sow dissent. I started to raise my hand; I wanted to discuss where sites like the Pro fit in, but Howie put a restraining hand on my shoulder. “Not yet,” he mouthed.
Martha McDonnell was the final speaker. She described in general terms what was going on in Congress, admitting surprise that so many smart, decent people had rolled over so quickly and quietly. Their lack of moral courage had been a great disappointment, she said. In response she had organized a small group of people she trusted, they were calling themselves the Congressional Knitting Society, although thus far they hadn’t settled on any course of action, or for that matter, any knitting pattern.
Martha was a gifted speaker. She was a small woman, but her voice projected an oversize load of candor and intelligence. The whole room was leaning forward to catch every word. The most visible change on the Hill, she explained, had been the emergence of lobbyists as middlemen. The administration had designated certain lobbyists to carry its demands—and its rewards to those who publicly supported Wrightman. A woman raised her hand and asked, “Is that ethical?”
The whole room erupted in laughter. When it quieted, McDonnell responded, “It’s Congress.”
Martha the teacher then gave a brief lesson on the presidential use of special powers. I knew a bit about it, having done background research when Trump claimed his emergency powers allowed him to build his wall. “The powers of POTUS to take affirmative actions during a crisis have never been completely defined or expressively limited, either by constitutional law or congressional action.” She was standing in the middle of the room, turning slowly so we all could hear her. “In fact, no one has been able to even define what constitutes a crisis. Congress and the judiciary have invariably permitted the executive branch to take whatever actions unilaterally deemed necessary to meet existing conditions…” She coughed, a dramatic tool, then added, “… without restraint. In fact, those powers might be viewed as elastic, as they have been stretched by various administrations to meet a variety of real and imagined challenges.
“Let me also remind you that in addition to government cooperation the exercise of these powers has required the acquiescence of a supportive public, which accepts the actions to be both necessary and appropriate to protect this country.” She made one full turn to make sure she had the attention of every person in that room. “If we’re going to stop Wrightman, this is where we need to start.”
Her lesson continued; the application of these special powers actually predated the founding of the republic. The Continental Congress passed acts and resolutions that permitted the nascent government to successfully prosecute the Revolutionary War. President Washington took actions not granted or proscribed when he raised a militia to combat antitax protestors. It actually was quite similar to the way Wrightman had done it. “Whoever is advising him,” she said, nodding with admiration, “they know what they’re doing.”
Martha was no slouch, either. She knew her stuff. When Lincoln had utilized his presidential powers to quash dissent during the Civil War, the Supreme Court had decided that “the government, within the Constitution has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence.”
The list was much longer than I had realized. Woody Wilson had used these powers to raise and equip an expeditionary force to fight the Germans in World War I. FDR had discovered unexpressed powers to impose economic controls during the Depression and later intern American citizens of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman sent troops to Korea; Kennedy and Johnson sent them to Vietnam. Ronald Reagan gave permission to the National Security Agency to conduct domestic surveillance. And Wrightman had already begun, updating existing Executive Orders 12333 and 10990, which gave the president the power to seize control of modes of transportation, including “railroads, waterways, and public storage facilities” to include “driverless vehicles and all modes of transportation known now or to be invented in the future.”
There was hardly a sound in the room as she told us what was possible. And when these actions had been taken in the past, most Americans, just as was happening now, accepted them without complaint. “A nation of squeakless mice,” she called them. Martha concluded her lecture with an especially apropos quote from Richard Nixon’s White House lawyer, John Dean. “‘Democracy works best in times of peace, where there is debate, compromise, and deliberation informing government rules, regulations and policies. When confronted with a major crisis—particularly one that is, like terrorism, of an unfamiliar nature—the nation will turn to the president for initiative and resolute leadership.’” She raised her voice to make sure everybody heard the last few words. “‘If our very existence and way of life are threatened, Americans will want their president to do whatever is necessary.’ Just think about that.” Martha certainly had mastered the political skill of holding an audience. “‘To do whatever is necessary.’”
She stood silent, letting her last few words sink in. Essentially, she warned, there were no limits on presidential power. And Wrightman had exceeded them.
As Howie and I were driving back to Arlington I felt a long-dormant surge of excitement. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I could have sworn I felt it in my legs. But that, I knew, was my mind playing jokes on my body. I was feeling the same type of exhilaration I’d chased during my operational days, when I was applying camouflage or putting on a disguise or winding down. Overcover or undercover, I was going into the mix, I was in the game. I’d gotten a whiff of that tonight. For a long time I’d been pounding out copy that didn’t seem to make any difference. I didn’t have the slightest idea whether this was just revolutionary masturbation or the beginning of something important. I just knew it felt great to get off my ass and do something.
Before Howie hopped out, I apologized for my outburst earlier that morning, when I’d watched him fold in front of the Homeland Security agents. There was a stew of emotions roiling his voice as he took one really deep breath and responded, “I didn’t have a choice. Those guys were as serious as the pandemic. If this thing keeps going south, we’re going to need each other.”
My apartment felt emptier than usual that night. Jenny had worked late and had decided to go to her place. I gave her my usual chipper Rollie when we spoke, telling her my meeting with a potential source had gone okay. She knew not to ask any more questions. Boy, I hated lying to her. There was a part of me that wanted to set a small trap that would allow me to dig into her psyche and find out what was really going on; another part just wanted to ask the question out loud, rather than letting it hang there. It was like trying to grab a fistful of cotton candy.
Instead, when we said good night, I just told her flat out, “You know I love you.” And as I said it, I realized that I meant it.
Her response was the ultimate payback: a long thoughtful silence. Maybe she was wondering where those words had come from, and why so suddenly? “Yeah?” she said finally. “Okay, then I love you too.”
Did her response lack conviction? I wondered. It sure sounded to me like it did. Maybe she didn’t really mean it. Maybe she just didn’t want to hurt my feelings? My mind wasn’t playing tricks; instead, it seemed to be playing the bongos in my chest.
“Say good night to Cher for me, please.” And she was gone.
Not gone actually, just moved into my dreams. In those dreams she was lying next to me. Her body was warm and willing. I licked my index finger and drew small circles around her nipple. It hardened to my touch. Then I slowly moved my fingers down the contours of her body, resting finally on her firm inner thigh. She drew her legs together and made a small sound of pleasure.
I was kissing her gently, just brushing her lips with mine. Then using my elbow to balance myself, I had pushed over on top of her. For a moment we just lay there, staring into each other’s eyes.
Later, as we lay satisfied in the flickering candlelight, she asked the lover’s question: “Do I really make you happy?”
To which I responded with the bachelor’s answer: “How can you even ask that?”
She wiggled a few inches away and propped herself and looked at me. “I don’t know. Lately you just seem so…”—she frowned, unable to find the right word—“… so preoccupied.”
I mumbled my confusion. I’d invested my life in this country, in both its real and symbolic presence, and I couldn’t ignore what was happening. I’d seen the faces of young people in Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan as I told them about a place where people lived in safety and …
She placed a slender index finger over my lips, and as her hair cascaded on the pillow, she reassured me, “Oh my darling Rollie, you don’t have to worry about any of that anymore. The American people are happy. We have a leader who cares so much about us watching over us, protecting us. People have jobs and homes and large-screen television sets. Children are being taught the right values. Why don’t you just let yourself accept this? Why do you have to fight…”
I sat up. I shook my head clear of that dream. My pillow was drenched with sweat. It was as if I had survived my own Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This wasn’t fair to Jenny, to convict her on the basis of some vague suggestion of unease. There were many parts to Jenny, which of course is what most men want in a woman. What I was doing wasn’t fair, demanding she answer a question she hadn’t been asked.
“Cher, come here, please.” Cher woke Mighty Chair and directed him to the side of my bed. I muscled myself into it and we went into the bathroom. I threw cold water on my face, as cold as I could stand it, getting even with my subconscious. Until now I hadn’t been personally affected by the political bitterness that had split families and ended friendships. During Trump/Pence I’d watched from a distance as insults replaced ideas and cursing substituted for commenting; as positions hardened and righteous anger split relationships as permanently as Lincoln had once split logs. When the Democrats regained power, I’d rooted for them, but from a safe journalist’s distance.
I watched it unfold dispassionately. And with equal doses of wonder and amusement. As a journalist, I saw myself as an observer of a fascinating social experiment. I’d written several stories about the changing dynamics. One of them that got a lot of pickup was the story of a man who had tracked down someone who had insulted his intelligence on Facebook and shot him three times—apparently to prove he wasn’t dumb. Until now, though, I had been a spectator, firm in my belief that these tectonic shifts didn’t affect me personally.
Now I found myself staring at my reflection in a bathroom mirror at three o’clock in the morning. “This is crazy,” I said aloud. “What am I doing? I know who she is. And even if…”
Even if? Even if?
“Stop it!” Whoa. The sound of my voice startled me. Yelling at my reflection was something I had never done before, and it was so outlandish I couldn’t help smiling. This definitely was an interesting and unexpected turn in my life, and surprisingly, I sort of liked the feeling. “You talkin’ to me?” I De Niroed, pointing to myself. “This is bullshit and you know it. Calm down. Be cool, man.” And then I winked.
I had hung a gold-framed sampler crocheted by my sister on the wall opposite my bed. It supposedly was an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” It was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes.
Jenny was still there, she’d been waiting in my mind. Either I trusted her or I didn’t. There was no middle ground. The military was big on trust. They drilled it into us day after day, in the mud and in the sunshine. It was all-or-nothing, and yeah, your life might depend on that decision. And once trust was gone, it was almost impossible to restore.
To succeed, a dictator has to turn people against one another. He has to destroy trust. I made a decision that night: I was going to trust Jenny until the day, the moment, she gave me a reason not to. But after that, admittedly I found myself listening more closely to her words and weighing the meaning. And I was more careful when I responded.
If the next few weeks were a test, she passed. She was becoming more outspoken in her anger or perhaps frustration. When she began referring derisively to the Wrightman administration as “the regime,” I appealed to Howie to invite her to a meeting. “It’s time,” I insisted. “I’ll vouch for her.”
“It’s up to Martha,” he told me.
“I thought there were no leaders?”
“There aren’t, but some non-leaders are more equal than others.”
This was arguably the most disorganized organization with which I had ever been involved. In the following weeks there was one more meeting, this one held in the rear of a hardware store. At least they told me where it was being held, which I considered progress. I admit it, the whole thing seemed like a colossal waste of time to me. When I complained to Howie, he quoted Lao Tzu: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
“Yeah, well, that’s probably going to be a problem for me,” I responded.
Howie pointed out my hypocrisy. “Love it. Situational handicap.”
Jenny was right, though: the administration had evolved into a regime. It had continued to consolidate its control over the media, reducing if not completely eliminating opposition voices. Some minor opposition was necessary to maintain the illusion of a free press. In addition, the existence of media outlets like the Pro provided a convenient target for Wrightman’s supporters to speak out against: Either you supported the president or you supported the enemy. Fortunately, the Pro’s location on the sixth floor of a downtown building provided substantial security. Mobs and elevators are not a good mix.
Much more significantly, the FCC regulation that had prevented corporations from controlling multiple outlets in the same region had been lifted, allowing administration-friendly mergers and purchases to further erode free speech.
As a result, the news from Washington was unfailingly upbeat. The war against terrorism was going extremely well; McCord’s Defense Department reported that American troops, finally let loose to fight the enemy, were rooting them out and killing them in increasingly fantastic numbers. The president had awarded the newly created American Freedom Medal to seven patriots who had informed local law enforcement about their neighbor’s suspicious activities.
According to the administration, the economy was booming; it was growing so rapidly, according to Labor secretary Sean Kelly, that the numbers were “unbelievable!” Naturally I quoted him on that, suggesting we take him at his word. In reality, people were continuing to struggle. Automation continued to devour jobs; rising manufacturing and agricultural costs had resulted in higher retail prices; loosened institutional lending regulations combined with increased interest rates had sent millions more Americans into debt; and changed behavior had devastated the travel and energy sectors. Through all this, the Treasury Department continued to issue upbeat reports.
The good news for us was that the Pro was too inconsequential to be considered an immediate problem. I continued to post my stories, getting in subversive digs whenever possible, even if on occasion I was the only person who knew the dig was subversive. For example, when citing those rosy job creation numbers, I referred to them as “a novel approach to economic statistics.” We knew the rules: We were permitted to criticize the administration whenever we wanted to; first the administration informed us when we wanted to, and then we did it.
I had to give Wrightman credit: not everything he did was suppressive. Or, as I referred to it, the Santa Claus factor. For example, over the following few months being able to impose wartime policy without having to bother negotiating with Congress allowed the administration to reinforce the shaky foundation the Democrats had laid down for an affordable healthcare system. The administration also imposed gun control regulations that limited certain types of gun ownership to militia members. The immigration problem was solved by informing the media it was not permitted to write about the immigration problem (and to be fair, employing cutting-edge technology on the borders). Crime too was reduced measurably when Wrightman issued an executive order authorizing pre-facto search warrants, giving law enforcement and militias the ability to prevent potential terrorist acts at the earliest possible time—thus allowing them to detain suspected criminals before they had even planned any crimes.
International relations were a bit more dicey. European governments, watching the increasingly repressive steps taken by the Wrightman administration, were wary of strengthening treaty and trade relationships. Far more alarming, State Department officials supposedly were in discussion with China, Russia, and the Saudis to forge a joint self-defense pact, a commitment that if any of the signatories were attacked by terrorists we would act jointly in response.
Here’s the way I summed it up: “You have to hand it to the administration,” I wrote, “otherwise they simply are going to take it.” (Ba-dum-bump!) The Wrightman people did an incredible job of diverting public attention from reality. It was like ancient Rome, where the emperors distracted the populace with great entertainments, highlighted by sword-carrying midgets pursuing obese people in the Coliseum until they caught and killed them; instead we had TV shows like Survivor: Chicago and Neighbor Wars, we had legalized betting on murder trials, and most of all we had readily available drugs. Whoever thought that the opiate of the people actually would turn out to be opiates?
This country hadn’t been transformed into North Korean or Syrian type dictatorships, I accepted that, and I also was aware that if you minded your own business, kept a reasonably low profile, and didn’t complain about the government, you had little to worry about. For many people, in fact, life was easier and better than it had been. I hated having to admit that, even to myself, but it was true. People now had access to semi-affordable healthcare while keeping all their earned benefits. On the local level, the legal system still sputtered along to the benefit of the wealthy. Kids still went to school every day, and state college tuition remained reasonable. If you worked hard and got a little lucky, you could afford a house or a car. Big-screen HDTVs, video games with intense graphics, cable hook-ups and an array of gizmos providing access to 500 channels were available and affordable. The sex doll industry was booming. There were no restrictions on travel, although for many destinations, it had once again become necessary to obtain a visa. But it was no longer Norman Rockwell’s bucolic America, either. It was more like Dalí’s America.
Rather than the system that had more or less governed the nation for centuries, a system in which three reasonably co-equal branches of government were forced to work somewhat in concert by a constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances, meaningful power was now vested entirely in the executive branch. More than that, in the executive himself. While Trump had governed mostly by whim, while the Democrats had stuffed thumbs in the leaks, Wrightman’s objective now seemed obvious: Consolidate power.
I suppose I could have gone along with it. I thought about it. Believe me, I thought about it. It would have made my life so much easier. I was living a wonderful life; I had a job I truly enjoyed; I had loyal friends and a woman I loved; with my salary and military disability payments I was financially sound; and I knew where to find the best quesadillas, Chinese food, and everything bagels in Washington. I had mine. So why couldn’t I just go along to get along?
I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today if I had been able to do that. Eh! I couldn’t, though. I’ve always been honest about placing blame where it belongs. I accept responsibility. So I will admit the truth—it was all my mother’s fault.
Another diversion. My mother. I suspect you’re familiar with the evil Cruella de Vil, the flamboyantly long-nailed villain from 101 Dalmatians. Well, my mother was the opposite. (Fooled you there.) She was the person who would have taken me and all my friends to see that movie. And then bought popcorn for all of us. Just my luck to have decent, supportive parents. Back in the barracks I had to listen to other people complaining about their colorfully terrible families. What could I say: My parents made me study! My parents taught me ethics and values, honesty and integrity, that there was a definable right and wrong and that I had been given so much, I had an obligation to stand up and cry out when I saw injustice. So it’s her fault that I’m sitting here.
Any chance I might have been able to figure out a way to live in Wrightman’s America and fight back from inside the system ended on an early spring morning. After that, the decision was made for me. I was walking into the Pro’s building when I was attacked by Richard Rodgers.
The stirring main theme from the composer’s Victory at Sea symphony suddenly and without warning began blasting through Mighty Chair’s Y-enhanced speakers. I looked at the touch pad, trying to figure out what in the world I could have done and how to turn it off. “Cher,” I said over the music, “stop the music.”
Instead, the music got louder. And then Mighty Chair reversed direction and began rolling backward into the street. I tried to put on the brakes, but it did no good. I started punching codes into the keyboard, whatever I could remember. I again ordered Cher to stop. Nothing worked. The system had been overridden. I was out of control again—exposed, vulnerable, caught in the open. For me, who was so confidently in control, having lost control was terrifying.
Rodgers’s naval theme stopped abruptly. Seconds later I heard the voice of Ian Wrightman explaining why it was necessary to curtail free speech in order to protect free speech.
A wave of panic passed over me, then was gone as my training kicked in. If I couldn’t regain control of Chair, I had to abandon seat. As I got ready to hit the ground, I reached into the seat pocket for my weapon. As I did, I saw him. Smiling.
Waiting on the sidewalk, a huge grin on his face as he played with me, tapping numbers into a remote, was a pear of a teenager. He was small and round, covered by a blanket, sitting in his own wheelchair.