9/14/2000 Geoff Ashbrook
Sandy swiveled in her womb like tall backed enveloping office chair and twirled the chord of the phone around her finger, twirling a curly lock of her hair with her other hand's finger. "I don't know how much longer it will go one either. Hank says...what? Oh, Hank says they're coming to some sort of settlement at those peace meetings but, I mean you can hear them outside, they're out there every day, I don't know what we're going to do when it starts getting hot out because we certainly can't open the windows with that racket. [pause] No, I hadn't heard that. Hold on for a second would you, I think I see, wait a sec." Sandy foot paddled her chair over to the window and pulled up the Venetian blinds a few inches. Outside, along with the faceless ralliers, was that familiar pink-sweater-baring figure, her favorite graduate student, Stevie Swalinko. Pressing the phone to her shoulder she smiled as she saw the young and spirited Stevie, shaking his finger at the picketers. She couldn't hear what words he was saying, but the ideas she had taught him. She had trained him to survive the mudslinging and name calling that went on during the public debates between the school of Astrologers, and the numerous schools of Scientific endeavor. And Newton knows that many a promised lad had become so discouraged during those politically warped dialogues, that they lost that flame of a dream that'd once shown so clearly in those wide-wonder eyes of theirs. "You'll never believe this, Pam, but Stevie Swalinko is out there giving those soulless Astrologers a piece of his mind. You know, I bet if we all got together, instead of hiding away in our building while we let ourselves get haggard down, I bet they wouldn't do this if they knew we weren't just a bunch of meek trekie egg heads." She smiled as Pam said something about getting together a meeting of all the faculty, and then she saw the picketers jump onto Stevie, pull him down, pin him to the street by his spread limbs, and cut his head off with a wood splitter.
"Oh My God!" she screamed into the phone. Then she watched as everyone in the crowd pulled out some annoyingly anachronistic long bladed weapon, held it in the air, and proceeded to howl and chant. Their long black cloaks and bright facial paint tossed ocean livid. "They just killed Stevie, Pam, Pam? Did you hear that? [Pause] Yes I'm sure. It just happened right outside. What should I do? My office doors? Oh my god, hold on." Sandy ran over to the large oak double doors of her office and lowered the heavy log of a crossbar. Then, pushing the hair out of her face and rubbing a tear from her eye, she picked up the phone again.
She sniffled and rubber her eye again, "Ok, they can't get in here now." Her voice was broken sounding. "Ok. [pause] Ok. [pause] I just don't believe this is happening." And she started to sob uncontrollably. Then someone knocked on the door. "Hold on one sec will you, someone's at the door. [pause] I will. [pause] I won't. Don't worry I'll be right back." She walked up to the doors mopping her eyes with forearms, her sleeves soaked like a classical Japanese lover's. "Who's there?" she called, trying to steady her voice.
A voice called back from behind the heavy doors, "This is Jackson Wyeth Fitzgibbon, please open your door. You have nothing to fear."
She felt an instant relief at hearing the sound of the voice of the president of the college. "Dr. Fitzgibbon," she said, lifting the wood block out of the way, "have you heard about what happened to poor Stevie?"
As she gripped the handles on the door his reply came through. "We saw everything," he said.
She opened the doors and standing there was not only President Dr. J.W. Fitzgibbon, but the heads of all the departments and many faces she only barely recognized. There were at least seventy-five people in the hallway outside her office door. And the President, and they, were fully clad in state of the art urban combat attire.
The president walked forward a few steps and then dropped to one knee and held his Kevlar reinforced helmet against his chest below his bowed head. Sandy squinted with confusion. "You see," he said," it was my decision to send young Steven out there."
"What?" Sandy took a step back.
"Yes," the Doctor said, picking up his gaze from the floor. "He was a Brave soldier."
"He was my TA, he wasn't a soldier. He couldn't even lift a box of printer paper."
"Don't you understand?" He said, holding out a large trembling hand. The palm was up and she could see it glisten with perspiration. "This is all for you."
"What??" She said. "Hold on. Are you all kidding? Is Stevie downstairs in the office or something? Tell him I want to talk to him."
"No. Steven is dead. He was killed in cold blood right outside your window."
"Yea, and what a convenient location it was. Will somebody please tell me what's going on? Donald, can you tell me?"
Donald Mather, head of the computer sciences department, stepped forward, his equipment jingled, and a clip fell from his backpack and nine-millimeter hollow-points scattered over the floor. "We are about to engage with the enemy." He said. And then he tried to bow on one knee and take her hand, but she pulled away and rolled her eyes and walked toward her desk.
"You're really serious?" she asked. "Where did you get this stuff anyway?"
"We've been building up for years, training in case anything like this ever happened."
"Why didn't anyone tell me about it?"
"We didn't want you to worry. We hoped you wouldn't get sucked in if things started to get ugly."
"So you're going to go and shoot people now? Is that it?"
"Look, Sandy, sometimes in order to stand up for the truth you need to do more than use words, and draw up diagrams, and coordinate peer review networks. Not everyone submits their opinion into the channels that we've provided them with. And some people's opinions aren't about mass, or parallel processing. Sometimes it's about flesh." And when he said that she saw something hatch inside his eyes, and she was reminded of all those 'innocent and carefree' conversations they used to have in the copy room. The things she used to imagine. "Sometimes bodies collide. Sometimes worlds collide. And sometimes it is just violent, and chaotic, and…"
She stopped hearing what he was saying for a moment, as she realized that there were two distinct uniforms that the Collegiate Forces were wearing. One behind Donald, the other behind Dr. Fitzgibbon.
"...A nation is more than just a bunch of people living in a place. There are ideas that bind people together, and there are ideas that tare people apart. Some ideas are a cause of discourse, and masticate lines of communication. And Astrology is one of these ideas, Sandy. You said it yourself." He said.
"When did I say anything about what you're doing?"
Then Dr. Fitzgibbon stood forward again.
"Sandy," he said, in his low voice that caused the floor to vibrate under her feet. "You gave a talk three years ago at a faculty meeting about the relationship between ideas like Astrology and patterns in society. And, well, you inspired us."
"I inspired you? To do this? Uuh uh, no. If I have such influence over you than take off those stupid outfits." One person in the back started to take off his backpack but the person behind him slapped the back of his head and he lifted it back on again. "You know what? If you're stupid enough to do this, you know I didn't think this was who you were, but if this is who you are, then I don't care what you do. I'm leaving this school as soon as I can."
The two men looked dismayed, their original focus and determination crushed and scattered. "But it doesn't mean anything without you," Donald said, almost shouting.
Then she saw Dr. Fitzgibbon was becoming red in the face. And he pulled out his pistol and pointed it as her. "You can't do this to us, you know. This school needs you. You damn women have too much freedom to flit around, coming and going as you please. You can't build anything with that kind of lack of control." He cocked the pistol. "Now you're going to stay right here, and when this is all over, you're going to be under the supervision of a guard twenty four hours a day. Do you understand that you little slut?"
Then Donald raised his gun and pressed it into the Fitzgibbons neck. "Don't you ever talk to her that way. She's our queen." Sandy stepped backward in express disgust.
Then Dr. Fitzgibbon knocked Donald's gun away and swung his own pistol like a club at Donald's head, yelling a blood curdling primordial cry. But Donald grabbed the incoming arm and twisted it, and using all its original momentum he hurled the Doctor into a large hydrangea by the side of the door. Slumped on the floor Fitzgibbon raised his gun, but before he could aim it Donald had produced a bullwhip and with a crack of it send the man's gun skidding over the parquet floor.
A moment latter she watched out the window as the two armies collided over Donald's shouts of 'to the queen,' though mostly all she could hear was Dr. Fitzgibbon sobbing and moaning, curled up in a fetal position by the flowering plant where he'd fallen.