Friday, November 23
1:23 A.M.
An abandoned warehouse in New Jersey
21 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“Congratulations,” said Larry. “You’ve raised the most pathetic army the world has ever seen.” Their entire band of revolutionaries had gathered together for an announcement—tie-dyed potheads, wrinkled hippies, tattooed vegan goths with more piercings than skin. Seventy-four forgotten, angry people who only fit in with each other.
Larry hated them.
“Try to get over it,” said Susan, leaning against their van. “This movement is bigger than the people in it.”
“For the record,” said Larry, “I also hate calling it a movement. It’s like we’re pooping out justice.”
“Wait,” said Tony/Fabio. “Isn’t that why we call it a movement? Now I’m disappointed.”
“We need revolutionaries,” said Larry, “not … hippies.”
“These are both,” said Susan. “Everyone we recruited knows this is a war, and they’re ready to fight.”
“They’re tree huggers,” said Tony/Fabio.
Susan shook her head. “They’re more likely to spike a tree than hug it.”
“Fine,” said Larry, “we have our revolution, and then we’re done with them. Only a raging idiot would want to let that pack of Communist baristas rebuild anything resembling a government.”
“The new world’s going to have Communist baristas in it, too,” said Susan. “You may as well just get used to it.”
“As long as they stay baristas and not politicians.”
“You’re not a politician, either,” said Tony/Fabio, “you’re a hired gun. Who says you get to make all the important decisions?”
“I’m not saying I do,” said Larry, “I’m just saying that they’re idiots. And they’re Socialists, which is redundant.”
“We never used to fight,” said Tony/Fabio with mock sadness. “I think you liked me better as a woman.”
“I think I liked you better as a prisoner,” said Larry.
“Let’s get this meeting started,” said Susan. She walked to the front of the group and shouted for their attention. “All right!” she said. “Eyes up here.” The room quieted. “It’s time for the next phase—we’ve built our revolution, we’ve laid all the groundwork, and now it’s time to make it happen. We want change!”
The group shouted back in agreement.
Susan ticked off each point on her fingers. “We want the government to change. We want their policies to change. We want their vision to change. We want their attitude to change. But more than anything, more than anything in the whole world, we want ReBirth to change. We want it to disappear. We want every last drop of it destroyed.”
The crowd murmured their approval, and Susan paced back and forth, stoking their anger. “Kuvam calls this a world without fear, but I’m still afraid. He calls this a world without death, but people are dying every day. You know what I call this? A world without meaning. A world without logic. There are five million Lyles is this world now, and nobody knows where they’re coming from. There are nearly thirty million other victims, in thousands of makes and models. Nobody knows if they’re going to wake up one morning as somebody else—as Lyle, or as Victoria Carver, or as some half-dead cancer boy in a corrupt government takeover.”
The crowd cheered even louder at this—if there was one thing Larry and the hippies shared, it was a passionate distrust of the government.
“Today,” said Susan, “I’m going to introduce you to the next phase of our plan. We tried to scare them, to show them how terrifying a world with ReBirth can truly be, but they’re not scared. They think they can’t be scared—that their ReBirth factories and their hazmat suits and their ivory towers can keep them safe, but we’re going to show them. Bring him out.”
Larry and Tony/Fabio opened the van, opened the crate in the back of it, and led their guest toward the dais.
“You’ve been collecting blank lotion,” said Susan to the revolutionaries. “You’ve been stealing it on the streets and taking it from the government and scrounging it in every corner of the country. Now we have enough, and we’re going to teach the world to be afraid again. We’re going to cross the bridge to Manhattan, break into the UN, and turn every world leader in there into this guy.”
Larry brought their guest up onstage, and he spread his lips in a wide, leering grin and hooted madly.
“This is Mr. Bubbles,” said Susan. “He’s a chimpanzee.”