Chapter Twenty

Max’s new girlfriend, seventy-two-year-old Gertrude Ackerman, was well connected. She secured a sly hiding place: Sunset Gardens, a nursing home just outside of Santa Barbara in the town of Monticello. Under pseudonyms, Max and Gertrude moved into adjacent rooms in the eighty-person facility. Aaron and Clarissa, also using fake names, became a custodian and caretaker respectively. They settled into a vacant room with a small bed, formerly occupied by a ninety-six-year-old man who died from liver cancer.

Gertrude’s niece ran the place with her husband, and she promised to keep them ‘off the books’ and protect their identities.

To fit in, Max discovered he had to slow down both physically and mentally. He was alarmed to see so many patients living out their final years with a premature departure from reality, humming along on soothing chipfeeds that made them happy zombies without aches or ambition.

“It’s a despicable way to live out your golden years,” Max said to Aaron and Clarissa as they sat down to a bland meal in the dining hall. “I refuse to be all doped up like that. Look at me, I still know how to live!”

“Yeah, by shooting people,” Clarissa said.

Gertrude hobbled over to them, gesturing emphatically. “You need to come with me. The library raid is on TV. Sheridan is talking about us!”

The three immediately left the table and abandoned their dinners. They followed Gertrude into a private staff office, where video footage of the burning library filled the screen of a television mounted on the wall.

“Oh my God,” Clarissa said.

Then the images became even more horrific: dead bodies crumpled on the pavement, including what appeared to be a teenage girl.

An emotional male voice spoke over the visuals: “This is a dark day in our country’s history. Clearly the mandate of citizen tracking has gone too far, with freedom fighters subject to violence and destruction.”

The Breaking News story cut to the man behind the voice: Senator Dale Sheridan. He spoke from a wheelchair, still recovering from the shooting that had damaged his spinal cord.

His face was hardened with fury. He was calling upon Americans to rise up against the social injustices created by the chip technology.

“I beg of you, each and every one of you who still has some common sense, a shred of human decency, to look upon what we have become as a country, as a people, and reject this way of life before we are brought down as a nation. We were once the strongest, most admired country in the world. Now, because of our obedience to the chip, we are looked down upon as weak, subservient, without ambition or true leadership. We are so distracted by the fake pleasures of the chip that we cannot see our own decay. The burning of the Santa Barbara Library, a place of refuge for freedom fighters, is a symbol of a much larger attack on the United States of America from within. We must replace our complacency with outrage. Capitalism, our core strength as a nation, is dying all around us. We are losing the trade war, our gross domestic product is plummeting, the economy is in ruins. We are experiencing free-fall in manufacturing, in education. Auto plants are closing. Farms are abandoned. The military is disengaged. Schools and churches are neglected. The American work ethic is dying. Our desire to learn and innovate is gone. We have become a nation of lazy, stoned, do-nothings getting a free ride off the government’s brain candy. Where is our pride, our patriotism, our backbone? The time has come to take back our country. Those images, going viral around the globe, of the burning of the Santa Barbara Library, the bodies in the street, brutality against children…we will never forget. Today is the day that the radicals in Washington have gone too far. They can control us with their laws, their regulations, their taxes…but they can’t control our minds. Take back your brains, people! Rise up and fight! Never forget the Santa Barbara freedom fighters! Those flames today are a wake-up call for every citizen of this great country. The burning you see should create a burning in your heart…for something better…something stronger…something that brings us together, not sends us apart to hide in our self-absorbed little worlds. Bring back America!”

Sheridan shook with rage. He clearly wanted to rise out of his wheelchair but could not. His hands gestured wildly, his eyes blazed and occasional spittle flew from his lips.

He called upon the nation to fight back in massive protests in every city and community.

“You cannot wait for the next election. The vote will be manipulated through the radio waves to your brain. We must take back the government now, by sheer force, through your outrage and passion to be better than this!”

From the look of the news footage that followed, he was getting some traction. A wave of resistance was building. People were starting to gather in large numbers to protest and fight back.

In the hours that followed, chipping clinics were bombed in Houston, Cincinnati and Denver. Angry swarms of people gathered outside the White House and the New York headquarters of Dynamica.

Aaron, Clarissa, Max and Gertrude stayed glued to the news coverage all day, while the rest of the nursing home residents remained lost in peaceful oblivion.

“The tide is turning,” said Clarissa.

“Thank God,” Aaron said.

“Thank Gertrude,” Max said.

Aaron turned to look at him. “What?”

Max smiled. “Who do you think created that explosion? Who do you think shot that video and sent it to the senator?”

Gertrude said, “Sometimes you need optics. Something bold, something big and colorful. You need to go viral to wake people up.”

“Wait – you started the library fire?” Clarissa asked.

“I will not be bullied by the government, and I will raise awareness any way I can.”

They continued to watch the news unfold.

“So where do we go from here?” Aaron said.

“Prepare for civil war,” said Max. There was a tinge of enthusiasm in his voice.

Gertrude took Max’s gnarled hand. Max turned and smiled at his new girlfriend. She smiled back through wrinkles and weary blue eyes.

“I can go to the grave knowing I did something right for my country,” she said.