 
### American Insurgent

By Adam Maciejewski

Published by Adam Maciejewski at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Adam Maciejewski

*****

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Summer 2001

September 7, 2001

September 11, 2001

September 12, 2001

September 13, 2001

September 6, 2002

September 11, 2002

September 13th 2003

Sewer Retreat

September 13th, 2003 again

Present

Present But Reliving the Past

Present, Awaiting Death

Present Day, Hope Brings Death

Final Moments

About the Author
Prologue

If you're watching this, there isn't a moment to spare. My barricade won't hold long against Hope. When Homeland Security bags me and I disappear, receding into the national memory banks; absorbed into our collective amnesia, these facts will be struggling lights in the dusk of my life: I was there when the towers of LOST CAUSE were bombed, but I did not try to kill any one. I was there when American Insurgent was born, but I am not him. I disagreed with the extremity of our nation's momentum, but I am not a terrorist. I am a patriot.

_There was a time when I wouldn't have considered my life worthy of chronicling. However, when I'm arrested, I can point to this video stream and say I am not the homicidal wing nut I've been portrayed as. Unlucky. Weak minded, certainly, but not guilty. If I'm lucky, someone watching will contact a law school flunky from the ACLU to work my case_ pro bono _and they might exonerate this innocent bystander who allowed himself to be swept up into one movement or another like a twig in a stream. Regardless of what National News Network reports of "themisms" from LOST CAUSE, the lines are no clearer than the visions of a drunk at three a.m. groping for any solid object in their brittle crystalline peripheral. Thief/survivor, victim/perpetrator and patriot/insurgent alike. They, we, have allowed the leveling of even the most polar of dichotomies. Therefore who I am is indistinguishable from that loser I was those years ago, watching stories of human rubble fall/jump one hundred ten stories to avoid the anticipated fate of non-existence imagined as worse than pain on the aptly named attaches of 9-11. And there I was, dithering about colleges. Maybe that's why I found the Insurgent spellbinding at first. He was definitive in a world where you couldn't find one truth about who was attacking us, but one for each cable news network. There was a bullet shot from a gun straightness about his truths and a lustful gratification in his antics._

_Now the question is, when I stop broadcasting my story and tear down my impromptu barricade of this room, who will be there to great me - Hope? The military? I suppose the pertinent part of my story starts in the middle, like any good tragedy_.

Summer 2001

The months before the attack, I was visiting colleges trying to figure out how to get out of leaving home for four years. You see, the thought of leaving all the comforts of home for an academically challenging program in whatever degree my parents picked for me just wasn't appealing. That, and I nearly wet myself just looking at a co-ed, let alone see one walking through a dorm hallway with just towels on. But, of course, since Mommy and Daddy wanted me to get a PhD in work-ology I had to oblige them in visiting at least one campus. Really, it was the threat of taking my PS2's power cord that got me to hustle over to Colombia's campus with dad.

*****

"They'll never accept me here." I whined, sidestepping another member of the campus tour, bumping into the dorm room's dingy brown doorframe.

"Your grades are just fine Stanley. Upper quartile even." Off handedly commented my dad, hoping the tour guide would hear and be impressed. He even winked at the poor girl as she was explaining the best way to get to the dinning hall from here. Seeing as her expression was somewhere between a Romero zombie and vegetable, it dawned on my father that she didn't give a shit.

Blushing, I mumbled, "I meant the students."

Walking through the campus on that August day was like seeing another dimension overlaid on my own. College just wasn't on any of my plans. Playstation, Mountain Dew and contact rewetting drops to fight eye fatigue – those were my only plans. The dorm rooms reminded me of cable ready tombs for two. Hell, in one room if I stretched my arms out and took a big breath I could span the width of the place. The only feature of the campus tour that felt comforting was the crows. You see, while the whole campus was warming itself in a mild August breeze bringing the smell of summer's last breaths – brine from the nearby ocean, hot dogs from the welcome tent and sunscreen – the crows were anathema to these. We were compatriots in our opposition. Both of us heavy, sporting black on a sunny day and equipped with annoying voices. My vocal chords crackled with puberty like a TV with out cable does static.

All of this makes the obligatory college visit kumbaya-get-to-know-you-touchy-feely-bullshit-game a lot like conscription. You hug your loved ones who wish you well and then cringingly step foot-in-front-of-foot until you locate an out. I learned this in fact from the very first "circle-up" event. So this particular game involved making a human knot by awkwardly holding hands with the person across from you with one hand and the person to your right with the other. "S-sorry." I dithered; grabbing the girl across from me's hand with my wet fish clammy hand.

"Uh, yea." She said wiping her hands on her skintight thigh length jean shorts.

"So t-this is pretty dorky, huh?"

As she flipped her coal black hair, "Dorky?" She rolled her eyes at me and simultaneously batted them at the six foot two varsity letter to her right, "I think it's alright." College visits felt like high school with even fewer adults around.

"Wait, Stanley!"

Hearing my name woke me from my flashback of the morning's drab gray walls and monotonous talking desks with floating heads behind them. "You need to walk under my legs and stand behind me." After I got over the idea that Jordyn remembered my name, my eyes followed her inseam down from her low-rise jean waist to her three inch black stiletto heel. It was as if my adolescent hormones put a soft lens over the close up of Jordyn's blue eyes, turned on a fan to blow her wheat blonde hair at precisely the right speed and faded in the song "Pour Some Sugar on Me".

Somewhere, as if coming from above water, "So are ya gonna move, or just stare at the girl?" _What happened to that sensitivity training you boasted about orientation leader Kevin?_ I crossed the ten feet between Jordyn and I - that gulf, that trench - like a cartoon dog spinning its hind legs kicking up a cloud of dirt then suddenly and unexpectedly gaining traction, lurching forward heading towards opposite sex oblivion. I crashed into her leg. Hard. In fact, it ended that inhuman knot game because she needed to be taken to the health center via stretcher.

"Brilliant. They let shovel faced pansies like you here?" Said Varsity, now with his hands around the size one hips of strawberry blonde girl who was gasping with laughter pointed at me.

"They let hairy knuckleheaded Neanderthals like you in." That's what I said back. Well, wanted to say back. Instead, all I could do was take note of the sky as the others walked away from me and up the hill towards the dinning hall holding dinner; worn jean blue, complete with faded whiskers of jet convection trails from planes taking off from LaGuardia. As I walked back to where my father's temporary dorm room was located, it changed to blueberry mixed with steel cobalt. A storm front was colliding with the benign warm front keeping us at a balmy eighty degrees. The wind picked up. Debris from the campus welcome party skittered over my feet: mini-streamers, confetti shaped like metallic black graduation caps, red plastic cups and one ply paper plates covered with ketchup.

As it turns out, walking through the college green would change my life. Ambling along with my ketchup covered shoes I could hear shouts in the distance diffused through a PA system struggling with wattage. There was a small crowd of ten or fifteen aimless coeds staring indifferently at the five women standing on the stoop of the green wearing fur coats and, presumably, little else.

The woman with the microphone chanted, "Fur is murder!" As her mottled black, white and brown fur flattened in the breeze. I found myself mumbling the chant back in a hypnotized daze. To stand so strongly for your beliefs in the face of apathy – I was in love! "Stop the wholesale slaughter of our animal brethren for the bourgeoisie!" That chant failed miserably as the crowd couldn't pronounce bourgeoisie and the cadence fell to chaos.

Even with the meager hedge lights as a backdrop, I could see Hope's nametag pinned to her coat. The sky was emblazoned with her words, each letter its own burst of pyrotechnic glory. When she said "blood", my field of vision was illuminated in scarlet. "Peace" lit the night with a flock of iridescent doves flying from Hope as their vertex. Then came the grand finale. I hadn't noticed the metal scaffolding above the protestors with white five gallon buckets thereon. At the command of Hope a lever was pushed and the board on which the buckets were nailed tipped forward at ninety degrees. Each of the protestors was instantly doused in blood – real or fake I couldn't tell. The slaughtered protestors then hopped off of the stoop and began mingling with the crowd, dispensing pamphlets.

"Hi, would you like to know more about our struggle?" Asked a protestor in a black faux cougar coat. Her red hair juxtaposed against the dark sheen of the allegedly deceased cougar like diamonds to coal.

"Uh, not right now, thank you." I replied swiveling my head as far as it could go around looking for Hope herself. I found her talking to another protestor, standing in her puddle of blood. According to her shoe prints she had walked behind the college green's stoop and just walked back over to step foot on the green. Thankfully, she approached me before I had a chance to put my foot so far in my mouth I was wiping my ass with my shoes' tongue. She spoke first.

"Hi, would you like to know more about our struggle?" Her party line delivered with a touch of pleading in her ice blue eyes.

"I would." _So far so good, Stanley_. She hasn't gone running for the bloody hills, but I had trouble not quivering at the sight of the lanky six-foot-five high-heeled corn syrup covered bombshell. No matter, she could be talking to a mini-van for all she knew because as she opened her mouth it was clear she was single minded in her goal of adding a convert to the PETA flock.

"Did you know that it takes twenty baby seals to make one coat?" Her eyes narrowed to gleaming slits with a primary red matt surrounding them as if weighing my answer for a predetermined activist gravity.

_Quick Stanley! This had better be a good one. How about, "No I didn't." Wait, that's terrible – she wants someone who knows what they talking about, not some blithering high schooler whose only trying to not have to change his pants after talking to her_. "What a shame." Finally dripped from my mouth like a faucet missing a washer.

"Glad to hear you're on our side." A smile rising from her chin up to her newly present dimples, ice blue eyes defrosting. "Are you a transfer student? I don't remember seeing you around campus." At this she placed her hand on my wrist. For a late summer night, she had a cool hand. My pulse raced, faster than I knew it could go, and my arm felt her touch searing my metacarpals. The sun itself began beating down on me; hydrogen atoms fusing together through subatomic collisions and pressure enough to collapse a semi-truck into a paper clip. The heat radiating from five small digits shook the air around us with glittering infrared diffractions of the shrubbery lighting, breaking the photons into pure electrons bouncing off of Hope with subatomic glee. I swear I heard them giggle as they whizzed past the two of us, but as I tried to locate each fragment of light it spread itself thinly across of the membrane of our existence, bonding me to Hope.

In the whirling light/heat haze between us, sound had a difficult time – the air was already vibrating in troughs and crests, which canceled sound through elemental violence. I was the center of this war. Standing with both feet planted but insides mimicking the heat waves; fluctuating rhythmically and with amplitude past predetermined material failure rate. The vomit was rising. Up esophagus, past uvula, tongue and onto Hope's baby seals. Instantly, the world was sharp edges and clean lines in my optic nerve. Hope's voice had won its war against the membrane of photons and was registering on my eardrum. Unfortunately, that sound she was making, the one mimicking a balloon's neck being pinched, means we wouldn't be talking anymore that night. She left Jackson Pollock prints all the way down the hill to join others in dinner. Regardless, I knew what I wanted – Hope and her strength of character stemming from her college experience. I wanted to go to college. Dad would be so proud.

September 7, 2001

Returning to General George Washington High for my senior year felt anti-climatic. For the days after visiting Colombia University, I was on a contact high of idealism – well as much as a high school student could be. I avoided big box marts, used recycled everything, down to the coffee cozies on my non-fat no-whip soy vanilla lattés I was downing before classes. I even joined the local group of PETA students who organized protests. We met in Mr. Meeker's room. Since he was an English teacher, I thought his life was a perfect example of dramatic irony. He loved leather bound books and fillet mignon. Sara, the founding member of our little group mentioned this after one of our meetings.

"Mr. Meeker, don't you think it's...a conflict of interest when you walk into a Really Energetic People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals with a real leather briefcase and snakeskin shoes?"

He blinked glossy eyes when he responded with, "We all have to make compromises in the real world – that's a lesson you all could learn. The earlier the better."

At that moment, there was a fire in my gut. Compromise? Compromise! I looked around the white cinder block room at the five other students around me. Sarah looked as though her puppy had just been hit by a car; standing slack jawed with her hands outstretched grasping at reality to give her evidence to the contrary of what she just realized. Elizabeth, her best friend, was filing her fingernails with impunity while Mike stared at her chest jiggling ever so slightly under her white tank top. Harvey, the red head and token independent music lover put down his iPod to look up at Mr. Meeker, flip his matte black hair back to the side of his eye socket, snigger "Whatever" and go back to his iPod, clicking furiously. Lastly, my best friend Erin was looking at me – searching for something in my eyes I couldn't find. We realized this simultaneously. I looked down studying the groutless tile floor pattern of tan Rorschach cards spilt across a khaki floor. Erin paused for a moment – I'm sure she was glaring at me. What was I to do? Mr. Meeker was right – the world wasn't malleable to our desires. It was always tempered steel. The best an individual could do was run their head blindly into the I-beam of the universe. The strongest make a dull ringing for a moment; call those like-minded hardheads to our cause and hope the bells of our craniums are glittering harmonies in the vacuous universe between humans. This feeling was one that began at this moment in my life and never left, save for flecks of hope that I only saw looking back.

Evidently, Erin expected more from me. "What the hell was that?" As she said this she punched her car's horn and gas pedal in chorus. I would have jumped forward, but my head clipped back into the headrest.

"I know. I thought Meeker was really into helping animals. Guess he's just in it for the advisor pay." I offered as Erin pulled into my development.

"I meant you!" Taking her eyes off the road and locking them onto mine. "You were the one who badgered me, piled guilt on me about animals and my parent's leather couch and my make up. You couldn't even speak up for yourself after telling me to! And to think, I was starting to think I liked you." She threw her head back towards the road and the wheel to her left, turning onto my street. "Friggin loser."

I was awestruck. If the headrests weren't padded, I'd say that I saw stars because of Erin's third gear. For a seventeen year old boy to hear that! My hormones surged as my heart stepped on its own pedal. How'd I miss that? Sure we'd spent hours making posters, marching and passing out flyers at school. I'd even checked out her ass a couple of times when we were hanging posters and she was standing on a ladder above me. But Erin? Me? Erin and me? When I had come to my senses, her slate grey Honda had pulled out of my parent's drive and peeled out before gaining traction and slinging itself forward.

"Wait! I..."

September 11, 2001

The days after Erin told me she liked me were the loneliest days of my life. Erin decided to sit with her other friends at breakfast. And me? I sat with the only other person I knew well enough: myself. With my back to the taupe and gold masonry work, I had the best perspective in the football field sized cafeteria. There they all were - sitting in their scatter plot of coolness with the zero point centered on the full-length glass doors to the twenty by twenty picnic courtyard. You see, the closer to those doors, the cooler you were assumed to be. That Tuesday, I found myself fantasizing about sitting there with Erin now that she had confessed her crush on me.

The fictional stares of admiration from fellow students were like heat lamps flooding the room with tangible energy that made me shiver as we'd glare idly out into the courtyard. We'd sit there, laughing full face smiles until our cheeks ached while the others glanced askew at us in envy; our laughs egging on their hydra-like desire to frenzied heights ramming its head against the walls of their heart's cage so loudly we could hear it yards away. Anonymous girls would walk over to me, put their hand on my back and smile weakly at my social standing.

"He-hey!" She'd say huskily, avoiding making eye contact.

"Hey. What's up?" With a feigned nonplussed blank stare as the generic fantasy girl wilted under my social prowess. Suddenly a crowd of football players in full gear and mini-skirted cheerleaders shaking their taupe and gold pom-poms flooded from the hallway door, chanting, "Stan the man! Stan the man!" The chair I'm sitting in spun upward above their shoulders until they bore the weight of the chair and I, parading out of the café. To my left, gold spotlights pointing up from the floor illuminated Erin in her chair, beaming, glowing at my procession. She batted her eyelashes so that her eyes appeared as glistening blue ponds compared to everyone around her. Out of nowhere she peeled a banana slowly with her pearlescent teeth and slowly rolled her lips over the tip and down the shaft.

For some reason that day, my daydream turned nightmare. Spun wildly out of control, even though it was _my_ daydream. We were nearing the café doors, the procession and I, bouncing methodically; metronomically parading out but the caravan didn't realize I was too tall to pass under. I yelled, "Wait! Put me down!" No use. Erin's up light cut out to be replaced by blood red floodlights spilled across the taupe walls, splattering over the gold like dawn's early revenge. Somebody cranked up the heat on the thermostat because sweat beads popped up on my forehead. That wall edged closer. I tried shrinking in my chair, but no such luck. I was bracing for impact, griping the base of the chair until my arms shook and the seat rattled. With feet to go, the pageant sped up, liquefying the faces of those around me. The wall hit me squarely in the forehead such that a wet thud was heard – and felt across the room. The world faded to black...

I'm told that someone threw a rock from the real courtyard because I was zoning out staring at the upper-stratosphere/class girls. Fantasy or not, a bloody temple earns you an immediate trip to the school's nurse. Turns out that thud _was_ audible. The rest of that day was spent in the nurse's room, waiting for the tunnel vision to expand out to wide screen. Jokes on them – I watched Looney Tunes' Sylvester and Tweety pummel each other.

****

Turns out that wasn't the only thing being pummeled on TV that morning. Sylvester was winding up, preparing to ram his fist through the brass bars of Tweety's frustratingly gender neutral cage when the feed was interrupted by the news.

"We interrupt the broadcast to bring you the latest news coming from New York City. Terribly, an aviation accident has meant that a 767 has struck the side of the World Trade Center. Authorities are reporting massive damage and people are running from the horrific sight. Now to our reported on the scene, Mark Smith."

"Thanks, Eric. The FAA is reporting it lost contact with American Airlines flight 11 early this morning and at 8:46 am. It struck the side of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Reports of electronic failure appear to be the suspect. More as soon as authorities relay the details."

At the time, I didn't comprehend the seismic waves those two ad-hoc bombs would create. I saw the images of weeping adults running like toddlers; arms outstretched looking for God's leg to wrap around. For his hand to extend from the sky and caress their faces with condolences and reassuring words as he patted their head. That never happened. Instead, heaven crashed down with the fury of hundreds of thousands of tons. Once idyllic clouds despoiled the masses, homogenizing them into nameless wondering zombies of white. When the first tower fell the school nurses ran into the room, partly to watch and partly to shield me from the cacophony of human and architectural wreckage.

"Those poor souls!" One cried, hands covering her mouth. The other simply crossed herself and sunk onto the cot next to me, her head on my shoulder leaking mascara onto my white shirt as I recoiled simultaneously afraid and awkwardly aroused. As the nurse, still standing, outstretched her arms to turn off the TV, a second plane came into view. Her finger hovered over the power button. The on scene reporter was struggling to keep up with events.

"Now if you look at second building, there are two \-- both twin towers now are on fire. Now, this was not the case, am I correct, a couple of moments ago. This is the second twin tower now on fire. And we're going to check on the second flight, if perhaps that had happened. This all began at about 8:48 this morning. Again, what we know in case you are just joining us, a small plane, not a Cessna-type or five or six seater, but instead, perhaps a passenger flight ran into the north side of the World Trade Center."

The news anchor sat ghastly white, trembling as he mirrored the nation's fragility. "As you can see, the second explosion that you are looking at now in the second twin tower has spread much debris, much more debris than the first explosion of the first accident. If there is -- is Mark still on the line with us?"

****

Looking back, dear audience, it was all simply an episode of television to me. Thirty minutes, maybe an hour of a day time thriller which took place in a galaxy far, far away; the three hour drive time to the towers from school might as well been light years and eons. I expected resolution in a primetime-slot: smiling faces hugging, praising God for their safety and entreating it to shepherd those lost across the river to it. What I expected took two years to reach dénouement. In that time, the rising tide of tension in the world completely altered history's trajectory like so many of the bullets to come bouncing off of reinforced armor, like the words the Insurgent uttered just a few months ago during one of his broadcasts to the nation. This broadcast still haunts me; my first glimpse through the looking glass into his mind and what was to come.

_His broadcast had begun with exactly what all of his other broadcasts had - his three piece suited body and hooded face holding up a newspaper with the day's date circled in red Sharpie_ TM _. Then the voice-changing program ran its algorithms and made Insurgent's voice a brusque, hollow digital reverberation. "Dear patriots, the time when this oligarchy of information, this abominable farce of democracy shall tumble upon itself is nearly upon us. Counter-terrorism. Patriot Act. Department of Homeland Security. LOST CAUSE. These verbiages were unforeseeable through the ashen terror-haze of 9-11. Had they been, had we fought back those boogiemen, democracy might still be an American value. But as it were that day marked the end of civility and democracy starting with what was nothing more than a common sense precaution and evolved into the physical manifestation of the loss of American civil liberties. Immediately following the attacks the FAA shut down all civil flights across the country. On his way to the evacuation site at 9:45am, the President ordered the three square block area surrounding the World Trade Centers to be cordoned off with the use of military force. Obviously. In the coming days the military set up information sites within that perimeter so that the local news media could air accurate information about death tolls, sequence of events as best we knew them and direct feeds from the President hidden in his God-only-knows-where command center. After these two years you have the Local on Site Tactical Cautionary American Universe Situational Explanation. LOST CAUSE indeed. With the inflated ego that comes with a unified purpose, Americans trusted every phoneme that was considered from LOST CAUSE and so in order to maintain credibility the major news networks moved all operations within the cordoned off area. First considered a blessing to be protected by the American government with their tanks and military personnel and checkpoints, some of us began to question whether the big four networks should just merge into one. Then, as if on a whim and as a practical joke, they announced their news stations would on April 1, 2002 so as to provide the most comprehensive world news possible._

"I, ladies and gentlemen of the soon to be liberated America, propose a change. What would our world be like if, let's say hypothetically, someone destroyed LOST CAUSE? Would you miss the Minister of Information? Of Edutainment? No, you wouldn't. And what's better, you would find yourself with - gasp! - choice! Isn't that the American way? Isn't it a capitalistic value to have competition? Since it is, that would make me a venture capitalist."

Click.

September 12, 2001

The following day I woke up to the primary colored rainbow and flat line pulse of the national emergency response system on my bedroom TV.

"This is not a test. The following is an actual broadcast for your information and safety." Flicker of high-speed snow storm then the President standing in a pile of rubble at the foot of Tower One. The grey haired leader of our country draped an American flag over his back and made his speech through a bullhorn as the pot marked cotton clung to his denim shirt, refusing to wave.

"My fellow Americans. I want you to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families that mourn. The Nation stands behind you, as we hope you stand behind us in our efforts to root out the evil terrorists who perpetuated these attacks. We are fairly certain that we have found the culprit."

_In a day?_ I couldn't fathom how in less than twenty-four hours they had gathered enough evidence to seriously convict someone. Besides, the people responsible had kissed their asses goodbye yesterday. Who was there to prosecute?

"We can't hear you!" Shouted a filth caked rescue worker.

"We hear you America," the president immediately responded, "and what's more we know exactly what you want. Retribution. Vengeance. From here on out, its us versus them."

"Yea!"

"We will not falter."

"Yea!"

"We will not fail."

"Yea!"

"We will find all enemies of the United States, whether here in our homeland or abroad. To those who harbor our enemies - I ... we judge you to be guilty of colluding to topple our great Nation. To those who turn a blind eye to our plight - you too will be judged. For evil plays when good men turn a blind eye. Thank you America for standing with us as we defend our great democracy from the heathen attacks on our way of life, our souls as a people. May God bless us. And may that same God bless all true blooded Americans." The crowd exploded with chants of USA, pumping fist in unison so that they kicked clouds of dust up at their feet that rose as mushroom clouds that hung around each neck.

I turned the TV off as workers began gagging as if they needed the Heimlich. For a moment, I sat in reflective silence. Then my mother walked into my room with her head drooping towards her shuffling feet. "There isn't any school today on account of," pointing at the deadened television.

"I...see. Mom was Uncle Mark...did he respond to the call?"

Drooping into my beanbag chair, her head lopped into her own lap and sobbed. My mother coiled herself around her knees and held them until her knuckles turned alabaster. "His...engine...arrived after the first." Gasping for air.

"...So..."

"Missing."

One word and I lost all feeling in my body except for heaviness of my head that made me feel as if I was a bobble head doll with the body of a pin. The room swayed. I dropped to the floor in front of my mother, clutching her bare ankles; watering the rose tattoo growing from her big toe with my teenage tears.

September 13, 2001

School resumed the very next day in a more chaotic fashion than usual. Walking through the halls you could tell who still had family missing; those visiting on a tourist trip, working on business in or nearby the towers on an ill fated trip that Atropos herself planned. Round their heads invisible tombstones for their loved ones hung, dragging their whole posture towards the floor, slowing their entirety. I felt that ghoulish weight myself; waiting to hear if my uncle had reappeared from the tones of rubble, pulse intact. Every step moved me towards continued nothingness. Less than hollow. I was brittle to even the phosphorescent rays that affronted the boarder between the world and myself. They rained down from every inch of the school's ceilings and my body hummed with contact. Honed to their packets of energy, my skin rang clamorously. I was sure it was audible; prevented me from hearing any normal conversation. All I heard was the constant death knell of a tone - millions of auditory synapses falling to their demise. Having to choose between being burned to death, trampled or falling, they chose an active death over a submissive passing. I would be introduced to Dylan Thomas in college and think how his corpse somewhere would allow itself a twinge of a smile at the thought. Then again, it's that mentality that drove four hijackers to board planes with box cutters. Philosophy's nothing but mankind's four am booty call. Sloppily used when convenient then dropped off on the trash can along with our used condoms and junk mail.

Hallway funeral procession aside, the day back was chaotic due to a third period assembly hastily slapped together. There was a principal, the guidance counselor Ms. Swift, a police officer who was new and Erin on stage in the auditorium. Erin looked like she had a cemetery's worth of tombstones hanging from her slender neck. Not usually self-conscious, Erin typically stood tall so that she appeared larger than her five foot seven by miles. Not today. Hands in her pockets and tombstone charms brought her down to human height. Factor in the stage's ostentatious largesse in the form of hand chiseled proscenium arch that was fabled for its height of forty feet and its intricate carvings of New York's titans of industry and their rise to power and she was downright diminutive.

"General George Washington High patriots," our school's mascot, "due to recent events we thought it pertinent to come together in order to help cope with our losses." So far Principal Arnold was hitting all of the right tones. Empathetic, supportive even. Scanning the audience, the usually excitable mass was restrained to the point of silence. That's how you know something's changed - when high school students listen to their teachers. "To explain how we're here to help, our counselors have some advice to give us on coping with these trying times and the changes that will go into effect here at the high school." As Principal Arnold said this, the previously unknown police officer stood up and introduced himself.

"Thanks, Principal Arnold. I'm Officer Frank of the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office and we wanted to inform you of some changes that will take place. Firstly, starting next week there will be metal detectors installed. Being this close to Albany, we can't take any chances with your security. Secondly, all students and teachers will wear ID badges that indentify who you are at all times. In this way, we can protect you from any outsider entering the building without our permission." There was a stunned smattering of applause and incredulous faces mouthing: _But why would someone attack here?_

As soon as Officer Frank sat down, Mrs. Swift raised herself and with Erin in town, moved to the podium. When she spoke, it was with quiet confidence and an ear-to-ear smile that belied a crack in even Ms. Swift's facade. No one smiled so soon after the attack. Hell, comedians didn't dare touch airplanes, September 11 or wheelchair access to emergency escapes for a whole year after the attacks out of deference to society's attitudes towards the subjects. That, and the first comedian to try it around New Year 2002 was booed off stage, ejected permanently from that club, boycotted and besmirched on all four national networks from LOST CAUSE. I knew Ms. Swift's unusually toothy smile was because: because she was happy to see us; feigning confidence in the face of the impossible; her over reliance on espresso brewed by the pot.

Her first words came out filled with awkward enthusiasm inappropriate for what amounted to a large-scale loss support group. "Hi everyone!" She immediately realized her faux pas. "Ahem. It is the guidance counselor's belief that through open communication, we can all bond together and move on past this tragedy. Honor our lost families," Erin shifted uneasily, robotically, "and build up our lives again like we know the towers will be."

"Blow up the Dubai Towers! Melt those sand niggers to glass!" At the outburst from our soon to be valedictorian, a muffled, "Yea!" Accompanied by fist pumps could be observed. Erin perked up like a wilting rose just now receiving nutrients from its roots.

"Now an eye for an eye will make the world blind. While the news of the perpetrators is very fresh, we are all hurt - physically and psychologically - but we must remain civil. If not, the terrorists have won and America has lost this fight before a single plane leaves the ground. We will have become the demonic fear mongers they've made us out to be." Ms. Swift answered.

"Kill 'em all and let God sort it out." Was the response from the crowd. Again, Erin was reanimated from her walking coma. This time she allowed her smile to slide sideways in a knowing smirk. It was then that I saw our more foreign looking students standing at a crossroad. One road led them to stand up from themselves; turn to their friends of years and look them in the eye and implore their better natures.

"You know me," they could remind us, and "I grew up across the street from you. We learned to swing a baseball bat together. You broke my kitchen window that summer pretending to be Babe Ruth. I took the blame, telling my parents that I did it." Upon seeing the granite look on their friend's face, they'd continue, 'Remember the time June was spreading rumors about you being too lame to try to kiss her when you really just weren't interested. I was the one who pulled June aside and told her to stop. That you were being polite and trying not to take advantage of her. Remember. Please don't go down this path. It will only lead to hate and shared loneliness."

Still others looked both ways at that intersection and their decision was to turn and fight themselves. First with trepidation as they tested the waters; inching towards auto-xenocide with slow claps and fast eyes. Later, as you know dear viewer, it was with the resurgence of bleaching cream and Mohammed Crow Laws passed by the 2003 congress nearly unanimously. Those in due time. At this point, Erin took the stand and her purpose was made clear.

"Ladies and gentleman," some of Erin's stature had returned, "I'm Erin Waters and I'm going to start holding grief meetings after school for anyone interested in attending. As many of you know, my mother and father were on a business trip to the Towers that day and as of right now are assumed..." The blood in my head rushed one hundred stories straight down to my feet and in the silence that was the auditorium, everyone else dropped away. The harsh halogen lights played their role and dimmed down save for the two directly above Erin and I. Their pure white intensity rendered Erin's skin alabaster and shone glinting chain mail silver hanging round my head and arms. A two story stone tower extruded itself out of the auditorium floor bringing with it the smell of burnt flesh and methane pouring from the nostrils of a bronzed scaled dragon that clutched the roofing shingles of the parapet.

"Erin, I'll save you!" I shouted, dropping the visor on my helmet.

"Shut your face, Stanley!" Crashed into my eardrum from behind me in the stands. Erin's face had no hint of its sideways smile, but that would be tough to see considering her hands were now covering her face, tower receding. The rest of the assembly was nothing but static in my head interfering with my day dreams. Erin's tower had changed shape to mirror tower one and the dragon had four jet engines under its two wings. It circled and weaved around Erin's tower ominously as it breathed fireballs through the structure to the screams of Erin's parents. I was in a fog, trying to avoid the student body bottlenecking at the auditorium doors.

"Save me from what?" Erin's face was less that a foot from mine, clearly tear streaked with mascara and red blotches.

"I was...just wanted to...I feel badly." Looking down was all I could do. Erin's shoes were low top Chuck Taylor's TM with the folded tongues brushing the top of her laces, which at this point were the grey of seasoned firewood.

"Ya, well at this point, feeling badly isn't going to do anything but keep us standing still." Erin said. I'd tell you how she looked, but I still couldn't bring myself to look above her ankles, which were covered in white knee socks. And yet, somehow still elegant - alabaster cottony textured ankle nubs sliding out over the languid seams of her shoes - I wanted her. "And what's more, we have to do whatever it takes to make sure that everyone affected gets justice for their losses."

I asked her, "How do you mean? The perpetrators of the attacks obviously all died with the victims. Who is there left to get justice on?"

She looked incredulously; slack-jawed and palms open facing skyward as if to say, "It's taking all of my restrain not to hit your face for ignorance and insensitivity."

"What?" I asked innocently enough.

"They obviously had help. No four people could have infiltrated our airports, overtaken a trained pilot and a plane full of Americans with out help." Now with her hands pointed up, palms this time turned outward to demark her boundaries, clearly separate from mine: "And something needs to be done so people know we aren't going to lay down and play dead."

****

If memory serves me, dear viewer and witness, Erin's group met the very next Monday, which allowed four days for people to absorb the information being broadcast constantly. In that time, Al Qaeda was added to our national dialect. Well, multiple pronunciations such as Al Cada, El Kaaaeeda and the abhorrent Ah Quaaedda from our more southern representatives in the government. You probably also remember that persona non grata and chief devil incarnate Osama Bin Laden, whose name will occasionally be pronounced "Osma" as multiple news agencies referred to him through their infancy of practice in the Arabic language and names. In fact, many Americans to this day still cannot pronounce his name, even though they recognize him by his DHS mug shot. The first meeting of Erin's support group was after school in Ms. Swift's office, which deserves a post all to itself, starting with the unsettling oversized poster of Uncle Sam pointing at you from over the undersized wooden desk placed directly in the center of the ten by fifteen room. I was there to support Erin, hoping to make up for my auditorium weirdness. Consisting of myself, Erin, Ms. Swift and two other students, I learned exactly how quickly things could get out of hand those days.

*****

Ms. Swift stood up from her faded blue chair and over the sound of it rolling away and bouncing off of the wall behind her said, "Well, would anyone like to share what he or she's feeling?" As our eyes slunk around the room searching for anyone who was desperate enough to break the ice, there was an undercurrent palpable across my skin. Ripples of grief, sorrow and hatred washed across my skin as the other students played the moon to those tides. Then, as if by consensus Erin stood up and everyone's eyes tracked her towards the Uncle Sam poster.

"We...know now that they're gone. I guess I kinda assumed, really. But to say it..." at this, Erin looked up and blinked like she was trying to use her eyelashes as wings to escape the flood of tears coming from her eyes, "to say it makes it real. But at the same time, it just isn't. To go to my grandmother's every evening is to pretend their lives are suspended in a purgatory. Our house is held in a kind of coma but my return won't wake it. Hell, I can't even go back there without smelling them. I went back for my history book yesterday and the second I opened the door a back draft of memories washed over me. I just sat on the welcome mat for a half an hour staring down the entry hallway."

At that Tom Q. Varsity stood up and took Erin's hand standing next to her. She rubbed the back of his hand and the two of them absorbed the condolences from the others. Tom, whom I had never seen before, is perhaps unfairly characterized, I know dear audience. One's memory under pressure doesn't typically form the diamonds in one's personality. Often, it only reveals fissures. Regardless, Tom was the kind of guy I wasn't. Self-assured, but not overly cocky in this moment, even I could see his appeal to Erin.

"We've got to fight back and take what they've taken from us!" Tom took out a piece of paper from his pocket and began waving it around like it was an American flag on the Fourth of July. "Enlist in the military! We're going to take it to those bastards -"

"Tom," Ms. Swift interjected calmly, "we don't have enough information to even say it was someone we could 'take it to' or to even know where 'to take it' -"

"To hell with that! They had it on the news. Some guy named Osma Bin Labeled is behind it. He sent a video to all of his supporters the other day. And even more, Iraq came out and praised the attacks saying we deserved it. I'll tell you what they deserve - a swift kick in the ass from their Uncle Sam!"

It's quite clear that Tom was hearing this information from multiple sources - home, the news, and therefore the fledgling LOST CAUSE. In fact, the rest of that meeting was nothing but anti-Middle Eastern rhetoric. Tom had no clue where Osma, as he called him, came from let alone pronounce his name correctly. When Ms. Swift challenged his pronunciation, he accused her of siding with him, declaring, "Why the hell would I want to say his name right! All I want to do is kill him." And there it went for the rest of senior year. The little changes in our lives thanks to 9-11, as it would soon be called, butterfly affected events soon to come. Or maybe more accurately, they gave rise to all the conditions necessary for American Insurgent - whom you have confused for me - after what LOST CAUSE called "The terrorist attack to end all terrorist attacks". As a parallel, historians will note that at this same time as the first meeting of Erin's group, Congress was attempting to react to the now infamous events. A group of senators and the President began concocting all the necessary ways to protect the American people from such an event occurring again. Their efforts would culminate in the Patriot Act signed into law by the President on October 26th, 2001 and later the colloquial Muhammad Crow Laws. A truly insidious day, as most didn't realize how life would be affected.

September 6, 2002

_With my senior year overshadowed by the silhouette of the Twin Towers' memorial spot lights, you can assume, dear viewer and alibi, that the year felt basically like that meeting in Mrs. Swift's office. Except that every once in a while there was some schooling going on. That being said, let's go forward to my first moments at that great institution, Colombia_.

*****

So Colombia started along in its own merry way. Which is to say, flaggingly. My first semester was a, a...trial run at college. I was already great at the concepts of cramming and all nighters thanks to my MMORPG prowess. But socially, that you could say, was a different beast all together. Take my roommate, for example: Ken. Let the record show I never chose Ken as a roommate. We have fate and a few college housing checkboxes to thank for that. Apparently my checkmarks in the "clean", "early riser" and "self-motivated" boxes were misinterpreted. We were aptly matched however in the "mommy-and-daddy-wanted-me-to-go-to-college-so-I-did" category. But Ken was somewhat of a phenom in the college party scene here at Colombia and it was only September. Its rumored that he once completed the goldfish trick, Dude's challenge and had a manage-a-trois in the same evening. Conversely, I had managed to start a Colombia guild with other people I had met online. Despite our differences, Ken tried for the first few months to drag me along.

"Come on guy, its the tri-lamb's back to school kegger and Jell-O wrestling contest." Ken said, standing arms braced at each vertical slat of the door's moldings.

"Thanks, but...I have a thing tonight." I said, flicking on the screen to my desktop.

"Oh, you've got to meet your friends online to slay another dragon, eh?"

At this, every lunch spent staring at the courtyard, every high school dance I never attended and date I daydreamed about but never had, came garishly into my mind's eye. My head jerked back so quickly it made Ken step back away from the doorway.

"What? Realize you're out of energy drinks?"

"No. I'm getting changed. Give me ten minutes."

Walking to the Lambda Lambda Lambda house, I second-guessed my decision. Fidgeting with everything from my hands, tugging on my shirt, smoothing out my hair, it's a wonder I didn't drive Ken crazy. I couldn't understand how he just keep walking like nothing was about to happen. We were going to a party \- that oft imagined scene where everyone feels like a king once they're inside. In high school I would imagine what it would be like to go to a party every time I had heard about one.

Stopping in the middle of the campus green my conversation - okay, my time staring at Hope - came back to me. Worried about some sort of last-man-on-Earth scenario where I had to talk to a girl, I asked Ken how he kept his cool.

"Guy, its easy. Make nothing personal - call her babe, doll, honey. Never her name. It opens the possibility of saying the wrong name wide open. Secondly, let her do the talking, but you do the deciding. If she says let's leave, you say stay. She says upstairs, you say leave. Put yourself in the decider roll and you'll add coolness like...like you add gold in your game."

"Gill, not gold."

"Whatever. If you're gonna talk like that, lets make sure to be in opposite rooms."

Nearing the house I was struck with two sensations simultaneously. First, outside the three story colonial my chest was already thumping in time with the song's bass. _Thank God. I won't have to talk._ Secondly, it just occurred to me that I had never had a drink in my life and I could already smell the dank beer from the front yard.

"You're gonna love this!" Shouted Ken as he steeped inside the open front door and shook hands with two Herculean Lambda brothers. They instantly looked at me in my, "I'm a keeper!" t-shirt and bland light wash jeans and shook their heads, mouthing the word no. In his last kind act of the night, Ken pointed at me, then to his own chest. His pantomime paid off as they stepped aside and I quickly followed Ken into the house so closely you would have thought our shoelaces were tied together.

The house itself was impressive; I've no doubt, if there wasn't a fraternity living there. On living room walls hung posters of girls kissing in their underwear deemed "artistic" by being printed in black and white, a thin tie-dyed sheet covered entire walls and there was the odd jam band poster push-pinned here or there. The walls around the hangings were dingy, used tea bag beige with splashes of assorted drinks at head height. Following through what would normally be a dinning room - now filled with a table on which twenty cups were set up for beer pong- their perspective contestants shouting as they tried to swat and chase the ball down in their drunken state - led us to the kitchen now turned keg room and source of the aroma first noted outside. Filling his red plastic cup, Ken noticed me still behind him and turned abruptly to talk to the nearest thing wearing a bra that he could find, thereby leaving me to my own devices. Which is to say, to hang me out to dry.

Looking around, everyone had the same ubiquitous red cup filled with mystery liquid. Well dear witness, I was determined to finally fit in, so I poured myself a beer. After watching a nearby brunette coed go first, of course. Pumping the keg's handle thirty to forty times - I really wanted a lot of beer - I finally opened the nozzle and promptly soaked my lap with beer foam when it exploded in all directions except for my cup. Sensing the impending laughter from those in line behind me, I grabbed the nearest bottle of booze, took off the cap and placed as much liquid as I could in my mouth. Wrong move. It wasn't the sweet smelling daiquiri that my mother was fond of but a liquor somewhere in the proof vicinity of jet fuel. Eyes watering I gulped down the gasoline and coughed like a victim trapped in a house fire.

Devoid of any personal connection I decided to leave \- besides in ten minutes I had been rejected, spilled beer all over myself and was feeling grateful there wasn't anything in my stomach to vomit after drinking liquor from the bottle. Who was I kidding? No one here was going to approach me to talk and I sure as shit wasn't going to walk up to someone and strike up a non-personal conversation where I was the decider. Therefore, I turned to go back through the dinning room/beer pong stadium and I nearly stopped on the spot. Hope herself was standing in line to play in the next beer pong match or competition. Whatever they called it. All I knew was I wanted to see Hope again. Not even necessarily talk; bask in her presence and breathe in her confidence. She didn't have much more in the way of clothing then the last time I saw her, so even though things were starting to get a little fuzzy by way of vision, I recognized those mile long legs protruding from white cotton shorts and yellow ruffled tube top anywhere, corn syruped in blood or not.

I made my way to the center of the stadium. Standing front row center table to view the match, I wanted to get as close as possible to Hope. She was up to serve, or whatever it's called, when she tossed a ball into her opponent's cup. Not knowing the rules of the game I stood silent. Then Hope started celebrating.

"Ya-yea!" Dancing around in a small circle with her fingers pointed straight up alternating like pistons in an engine. "What! Drink up, loser!"

While her one opponent was drinking, Hope's partner bounced the ball towards the cups and the non-drinking opponent, with great delay, swiped at the ball. Unfortunately, the ball was already in the cup and the player knocked the ubiquitous red cup directly at my shirt. My torso now matched my jeans in stain and scent. At this, Hope came over and apologized, swiping her clearly drunk hand over the entire stain, which ended perilously low on my torso, sub belly button even, which immediately sent me into launch mode, if you follow. I had to abort; think of anything that would deflate my excitement faster than a balloon popped by a pin in a While E. Coyote cartoon. The first thought that came to mind was actually Erin and the moment where she shouted loser and peeled away in her car leaving me with my head drooping like a dying sunflower. Yep, that did it.

"OhmygoshI'msosorry!" She ran together.

"Its -"

"Here let me get you some towels." As Hope walked away all I thought about was that she had talked to me. Even touched me and wasn't repulsed. Maybe tonight _was_ going to be a good night.

"I can't believe she did that without even saying something. Even 'my bad' would be better than nothing." Toweling off my shirt, I couldn't focus as my mind wandered. Somehow everyone exited, as if by direction, leaving just Hope and I alone in the beer soaked hard wood floored room. Suddenly I was taken aback as Hope was now wearing a black corset and stockings, whip cream in one hand and a feather in the other. She was walking towards me, one-mile long leg directly in front of the other so her hips swayed like lighters at an 80's hair band's ballad.

"Wanna play?" She said, silkily.

"Huh?" I pulled out of my vocal chords.

"Do you want to play? I need a new pong partner. Mine just got sick in the bathroom."

The rush of party sounds returning nearly shocked me more than Hope's proposition. When I looked up, Hope was back to wearing her tube top and shorts. "Uh. O-Okay." I had already broke one of Ken's rules. Not knowing how to play I just stood at the end of the table, next to Hope, letting her go first. Nearest I could tell, you threw a ball at your opponent's cups. If you sunk it, your opponent drank it and vice versa. First team to drink all their cups loses. Hope had sunk her shot and had passed the ball to me. Feigning the athletic stance I had seen everyone else take, I threw the ball about three feet past the end of the table.

"My bad." I said, remembering how she had said it and mimicked the tone, ensuring my voice bent down at the end of the phrase.

Hope smiled, "First timer?"

"No, no. I've played a few times before. It's just that it's been a while."

And so the game went. I didn't sink a single cup, which meant we lost in about five minutes. Terrible luck, really, considering this was my first night drinking and I had just downed three beers on top of my liquor mouthwash. On the upside, I was emboldened with liquid courage and therefore had no trouble talking to Hope.

With a slight slur, "I'vvve ssseen you before."

"What?" Hope mouthed. The sound system was winning the fight for Hope's eardrums.

In response I mouthed "Outside." And shrugged my shoulders to indicate a question. Ken would have slapped his hand across the back of my head for even making it a question, but what the hell? It had been going okay so far. She nodded in pantomime as her response. Wadding through the crowd of drunken coeds I panicked. _What was I going to say? I think you're hot and I want to join your group so I can ogle you?_ Or maybe the really charming _, I sort of feel strongly about saving the world, but really just admire your spirit._ Like that wouldn't make things awkward.

On the way out we had passed Ken who was pressed up against a chestnut haired girl writhing. I'm sure they'd call it dancing. He caught a glimpse of us walking out together and made a face like his soon-to-be-bed-buddy turned out to be a man; eyes wide and mouth twisted open just enough to blow out a candle.

Hitting the wall of cool, fresh air outside was like having the alcohol emptied from my veins. My courage-o-meter read negative thirty and I only wanted to run back to my dark little hole lit solely via computer screen and backlit keyboard; to be swathed in the anonymity afforded me by pixels and computer servers. By this point Hope sat down on the front steps of the porch, nearly breaking an ankle on the uneven height steps.

"Nice job there, partner. Let's just say beer pong is not your game. Now why are we out here again? No offence pal, but you're not getting lucky tonight. I don't even know your name; are you a democrat?" This was certainly not going how I had hoped. She was a drunken mess and I'm a statue. Best start with the basics.

"My name is Stan. I had seen you last summer during the PETA protest where you poured fake blood over yourself."

"Oh, that. The College Democrats teamed up with the PETA tools because the republicans were sponsoring a bill banning the import of foreign chinchilla fur and we democrats wanted to provide subsidies to chinchilla farmers here in America. 'Reduce our dependence on foreign chinchilla, reduce our national security risk'. Or at least that's the rationale coming from LOST CAUSE." Not being yet politically motivated, determined viewers, this was the first time hearing of the foreign-import-National Security-complex or even LOST CAUSE for that matter. So looking back, this bookmark is my first baby's waddle towards political activism, something I'm now synonymous with. "Oh, yea. I wish we could stop sending money to those friggin' terrorist sand lovers just for oil." It was something I heard dad say over summer break when he paid two dollars a gallon to fill up the old 6200 diesel truck.

"I know, right?" She smiled back famous dimples now the depth of oceanic trenches. "We're just lucky we sold the stupid animal huggers on the idea that if we moved chinchilla production to the United States, they could effectively shut it down with legis...lettuce...laws. Really it was all so our local chinchilla farmers could get...is it just me or is the porch spinning?" The porch wasn't spinning, darling alibis, but my mind was. Set to the background music of Hope vomiting off of the side of the porch, my heart and mind were running a marathon. To plan what I now would call Machiavellian moves choreographed like _The Nutcracker!_ To hell with animals. I wanted in on politics.

September 11, 2002

If that night was a bookmark in my life, the first anniversary of the attacks was a spotlight. I had slept past my seven thirty am French class thanks to a pretty nasty dream. I dreamt I was a firefighter with Uncle Mark that morning. We were sitting in the firehouse kitchen making oatmeal in the time-beiged microwave when the siren went off two stories above us. Simultaneously, our radios chirped at us and related all of the information the dispatcher had for us.

"Eight house, eight house. Reports of explosion and fire at WTC Tower One. Eighty-fifth floor. Please respond."

"That's us Stanley the manly. Get your gear." My uncle shouted over the siren as he rubbed my hair out of place in that familiar way.

Sliding down the firehouse poll was no easy feat. As I slid down, anonymous burnt bodies flung themselves down faster than I; women still clutching their babies though they pointed headfirst towards nonexistence, men screaming in falsetto as they flailed mid-air to put out fires on their charred heads now wigged in smoke. Fearful of what lay below, I struggled to stop my momentum with my boots and tried desperately to gain altitude over debris pilling up below me in the shape of a tower. Eventually the acrid smelling hill threatened to overtake me. Instead of being buried alive I planted my feet and started walking. The scenery changed from the city's urbanity to desert: debris pile metamorphosed into rock and sand and the buildings around the engine house transformed in a heat haze to mountains of a chilled blue hue. Strangely, blue was the dominant color in my nightmare landscape. Not the calm, inviting blue of sanguine water but it was as if a film major placed a blue filter over my mind's lens; a dichotomous chilling effect in comparison to the blazing sun's glittering heat wave and sand induced reflection. Hopping around me in this new world were Hope-headed chinchillas who would periodically stop and dig with their hind legs only to cause oil geysers to spring forth. As I walked over to a geyser, my Uncle Mark's boots came into view near the base of a chinchilla hole. Before I could get to them to save something of his life for my family, a bell began ringing in the distance. Softly at first, then as if my head were the ball of the clapper, ringing it with violent reckoning. The vibrating noise alone woke me from my sleep; groggy and inconsiderately loud in my morning phlegm clearing routines.

"Wait!" I gargled through phlegm. In response, Ken and his current friend with benefits shot pointed looks towards me and pointed to the DVD player's clock. Eight forty six a.m. It was the statewide moment of silence to honor the fallen. I quietly sat upright in bed and squeaky mattress aside, remained silent until the ringing of the St. Paul's chapel bell signaled the end to the silence. In fact, though the bell had rung, no one in the room, indeed the entire state dared not even sniffle. The oxygen had been sucked out of the fifty five thousand square miles of New York State and in its absence all noise refused to travel. My mind was opposite to the room's vacuum: sensing every emotion from three hundred sixty five and one quarter days ago in an out of body experience surreal enough to count as spiritual. The nurses' office, the suddenly silenced TV, seeking comfort but finding none walking the halls full of students in the same track of emotion stuck on repeat. Multiple crescendos, multiple decrescendos but never a coda. Just more measures to be played ad infinitum.

While not typically a religious man, dearest, something drew me to the service held that day at St. Paul's Chapel. So after showering and eating I made the trek from my Morningside Heights apartment to St. Paul's and witnessed firsthand the circus that LOST CAUSE refused to broadcast and was therefore refuted by all major networks and relegated to Terror Era folklore. Approaching St. Paul's from the rear, I could only make out faint shouts that sounded more like whispers flitted about by the wind. Walking around the side of the chapel revealed only one of the two shouting masses that were present that day. I first came upon anti-Afghanistan, Democratic war protestors and their iconic, "Make love, not war" signs alternating piston-like in a precise up-down-up pattern that served to reinforce their dancing motions in a circle. I spotted Hope there right away, holding one of the mass-produced signs in her tank top and crop pants. The sign wasn't the only thing bouncing that caught my eye. The circular peace dance brought Hope to where I was standing watching the protests on the outskirts of the circle and once she spotted me in the crowd, she put down her placard and jogged over to me.

"Glad you came. The Republicans definitely out number us so we could use as many extras as possible." With that she grabbed my wrist for the second time in my life and led me into the circle where extra signs were stockpiled. Hefting the sign into the air, I began chanting along side the rest of the college Democrats, my sign pistoning in the air slightly off beat - pulling down when it should have already been paused at its floor and pushing skyward when it should have already been gliding at its zenith, in a staccato beat as compared to the other Democrats whose long practiced legatos let passersby read the signs they valued so much. The crowd of one hundred or so anti-war protestors and supporters surrounding us meant that the circle rotated slowly such that I hadn't yet seen the front of St. Paul's. Had I seen the frothing masses stationed just in front of the chapel's entrance, I certainly would have ran home to my apartment and possibly locked the door.

By contrast the College Republicans were ravenous wolves circling their pack in preparation to pick off the weakest in our herd. Some two hundred or so anti-protest-protestors had shown up with a chaotic potpourri of signage ranging from the tactful, "We will never forget" to the illogical, "Some one should shut you up!" and "Americans for American Chinchilla", to the racist, "Love Americans, not towel heads" as well as the elitist, "Hawks eat doves for breakfast". They too were circling but opposite to our movement; two separate cogs whose synchronized movement allowed for the machine that is free speech to hum along; one driving the other. The trouble that day is that someone, somewhere, threw a monkey wrench into the machine - literally. I had my back to their circle as the wet thud of the wrench struck me in my right eye, so to this day I've doubted the claim of Republican malfeasance. In the exact moment following my attack, pure silence occurred. Death to all vibrating air so that, unaccustomed to that level of silence, my brain created its own humming to accompany the sanguinary gauze covering the visible world. In that moment, my brain stopped sending conscious impulses to my legs and I hit the deck. It was nine fifty nine am. The second statewide moment of silence and so while completely visible to protestors and supporters, no one did anything. The second moment was so enveloping in its ability to make those present relive the collapse of the South Tower that everyone stared at me, but no one saw. Once St. Paul's chapel bell rang to signal the resumption of sound, the two previously stationary cogs became whirling dervishes, and they headed directly towards one another.

"They attacked us! We were just protesting!" Shouted a stout democrat legs barely visible through my veil of red.

Then a Republican shouted "Traitor! It was -" Before that woman could finish her sentence, the Democrats bared down upon her with their red, white and blue signs, bludgeoning her with stake and poster sized corrugated plastic. At this, the Republicans broke formation and chose to fight protestor to protestor. From my ground level vantage point I could see feet and torsos revolving and retreating; the dry crack of pine stakes on backs and skulls and see the individual protestors fall stunned and moaning once struck. Some would get up and run. Others would be too incensed and rejoin the fight once feeling returned to momentarily paralyzed legs and frayed senses re-knotted themselves together. The former missed the arrival of the riot police by moments as patrol cars suddenly began to arrive to set up a perimeter and wagons began to unload their stoic cargo. Those remaining were too busy to notice they were being herded into a riot police encircled pen.

I tried shouting something to get people to stop and listen to reason. When I got to my feet finally, I wanted to shout, "Stop!" But for some reason on my feet surveying he battlefield that surrounded me like the inversion of theatre in the round, a totally different sentence came out of my mouth. "For America!" Surged from my emboldened lips. Unfortunately at that moment, the police had begun shooting tear gas into the crowd and so on top of a smashed orbital bone the canister that landed ten feet from me was issuing forth enough noxious gas that when I started coughing my eye felt as if it was being tugged from its socket with vise grips. For the second time that day I found myself on the ground, blacked out.

When I awoke in the school health center I had a strong sense of déjà vu. As it happened, the TV was on in my room and the news from LOST CAUSE was that the campus had had a terrorist threat called in and that the riot police broke up a gathering of anti-US protestors. No video and therefore no way to refute their assertion. They reported similar occurrences at Harvard and the University of Texas. The newscaster reported, however, that the UT students had handled that one themselves by combined use of cattle prod and brute force; there is no waiting period to buy a shotgun in the state, so in the midst of the Texas protests, most students walked to the on campus ammo store and brought their own self-protection to the site.

"This just in." The newscaster stated with a surprised look and a hand to his ear, "The President of the United States will be addressing the nation moment -"

A quick flicker then the Presidential seal on a field of blue appeared, faded to the President with the caption, "Bomb Shelter One". The President hadn't shaved - as evidenced by his snowy five o'clock shadow, accentuated by the one phosphorescent lamp above his head - and was in a rumpled suit that he may have slept in. "My fellow Americans, today our homeland was again attacked. This time the enemy had help from some very misguided former Americans. To show you how seriously we take these events, all individuals known to be taking part in these anti-American rallies today will be, if proven guilty, executed as traitors to America. Any enemy combatants on US soil will furthermore be tracked down and persecuted to the fullest extent that the new Patriot Act will allow. The instigators at the Colombia site, once determined, will be the first entrants into our new terrorist tracking program, using new technologies to identify and monitor their whereabouts. If you suspect anyone you know to be cajoling enemies it is your responsibility to alert the authorities or risk being charged with aiding the enemy during war time, whose minimum penalty is life imprisonment. If you see something, say something. Thank you. May God bless you, and may the Christian God bless America."

"Oh shit!" I blurted out.

"Great, isn't it?" Questioned a disembodied voice to my left, through a thin office divider wall. "We've got to do something, Stan! Talk to the Dean, maybe even the police. Anything so that we don't go to jail for the next thirty to life! Lets hope you talk better than you play beer pong."

Hope. I had totally forgotten that somewhere among the pain and placards, she was fighting too. "What, what happened to you?"

"I was dragged here by a police officer and told that if I left, _they_ would find my family and the next time I went home, _I_ wouldn't." At the last few words, Hope's voice quivered so that she verged on the parlance of a three year old.

I hadn't done anything wrong and yet here I was feeling threatened by a shadowy force yet to have a face. _Great, that's what I get for finally following my hormones; thirty to life._ It was at this point in my burgeoning activist's career that I realized, sitting there in the health clinic, that getting something meant more than showing up and collecting your trophy. It meant sacrifice. It meant sticking up for what you believe to be right based on universal codes of humanity. It meant -

"Son, what you did out there was dumb. Down right _ignorant."_ How long the DHS officer had been there during my inner rant, I wasn't sure. But what I did know is that when he spoke, I had to stifle a laugh because of his southern accent, yet I was still keenly aware of his power over me and so managed to camouflage my laughs as intimidated clearing of the throat. "Naw, boy, heere's what we're gonna do. Ewe 'ere dumb bein' there, ya see now? But tha president's got bigga fish to fry. So we're gonna put ewe on tha' terror watch list 'n if ya pop up 'gain we're gonna put ya head in a black bag." At this he lifted up a black velvet bag, just big enough to act as hood and cowl, "an' tighten tha' cord 'round your neck an' when ewe see light 'gain 't'll be in a fancy new black prison. Don't nobody know 'xist yet. So nobody'll ever find ya n'till we let you go. Whenever that'll be. Kapeesh?"

After a moment to literally process his language into audible speech, I responded with, "Y-yesh." I couldn't look him in the eyes. In fact I assumed the defendants pose after guilty verdict in a Kafka trial; head bent ninety degrees grotesquely downward with juxtaposed wide eyes in all encompassing bewilderment. I was hit with a wrench and I'm a terrorist. Those two polarities of victim and perpetrator should have repelled each other, but in some sort of Terror Era Trinity you could be Victim, Terrorist and Holy Ghost simultaneously. Without the worshipping, sadly.

The unnamed DHS agent picked up his black bag - sans cranium - and before he left the room, spun around and hissed, "Oh, boy, we've got something else planned for ya'. Youse gonna be a pioneer in tha fiel' ov bioinformatics." With that, he left the room with a gentlemanly slam of the door. _So much for God fearing Southern hospitality._

The agent wasted no time walking next door to Hope's room. Thanks to cubical divider walls, I could hear every drawled syllable. "See here missy - "

"Hope."

"What was that?"

"I have a name. It's Hope."

"Naw see here, Miss Hope. We've been keepin' an eye on you and your friend in the college democrats. Opposing Big Chinchilla subsidies in protests. Callin' locals to join in wit' ya. We even got ya checkin' out The Commune-ist Man-e-festo -"

"That was for Humanities II. Its a required class for everyone at Colombia." Hope said with a set of chilled vocal chords.

"As far as the Fed-er-al government sees it, Missy Hope, ya'll've been excitin' vi'lence and showin' interest in government arrangements other than good ole Democracy. That there is reason 'nough to call you a en-e-me combatant."

"So, so what's that mean," even higher pitched than before, "and how'd you get all that information about me? Huh? Using illegal wire taps, are we?" Somehow a steel rod had to have been inserted in her voice box momentarily because those words were suddenly unyielding.

"Tha' Patriot Act. Ya'll should'a been following tha' news closer 'stead of doin' all that marchin in circles. That don't get you nowhere. All that info there is under my juris'dicken thanks to it. An en-e-me combatant? Why, thas just fancy lawyer title for 'we can do wha'ever we want with you 'cause we think ewe'r working for t'other side."

Without the former steel rod, "So, what can I do to get out of trouble?"

Shivers traced the outline of my veins as the next words were hushed and I held my breath leaning forward on the examination table, wincing as the butcher paper crinkled under my shifting weight. All I could make out was, "That depends on how badly ya want it." A muffled scream shot up over the divider wall and soon the sound of briskly ruffling nurses' scrubs and a door handle hitting a wall.

A third voice entered the drama with a high-pitched, anxiety riddled, "What's happened?"

"Missy here's just real-ized the sever _ity_ of her actions." Said DHS agent with all southern hospitality void and empathy removed. The health clinic was injected simultaneously with the sounds of Hope's dignified sobs measured by the even-paced heeled steps of the agent leaving.

When I had returned to my apartment there were three messages from my father on my voicemail. "Stanley, its father. We've heard of the planned terrorist attack. Give us a call so we know you're all right. " Beep. "Stanley, father again. The news didn't list anyone hurt. Are you there? Did you get in trouble?" Beep. "Stanley, you can tell us. Its mom and pop. Are you engaging in terrorist activity? I mean why else wouldn't you call us back right away? If you're locked up for being a..." hushed now, "'Allah-lover', we'll send our lawyer. Sure he's an injury attorney, but I'm sure he can -" Beep.

****

The events of that day led Colombia - indeed all colleges and universities that received government funding - to officially eliminate any political or socially motivated group under the auspices of them posing a clear and present danger vis-à-vis wrench throwing and the other ninety hospital visits logged that day. Those of us in college at the time felt a loss so complete it was as if higher education institutions were dogs being trained not to bark; any audible rumblings of university sanctioned anything besides sports and the university police could suddenly be seen toting black velvet bags with draw strings next to their handcuffs. The public, on the other hand, only heard of the organized "terrorist plots" that were broken up and that it wouldn't interrupt college football in any way.

September 13th 2003

Catching a glimpse of myself in the camera's feedback square I realized I needed a shave. Patchy, three week old beards scream one of two things. Either, "I'm trying to be Indie, and refuse the conventions of the business world." Or, "I'm terribly slovenly!" It's the same one worn on our first meeting of PETA my freshman year. This beard, however, just so happens to have formed right after The Awakening - the day that I was introduced to you, dear audience. In fact, you may as well know what happened right after that day as I went into hiding in Hope's apartment, using the escape plan Insurgent had set up for himself to use, planning his escape from bombing LOST CAUSE at the Awakening.

*****

"August 21, 2003: Net Around American Insurgent Tightens"

"January 1, 2003: Insurgent's Threat to America"

"December 10, 2002: Insurgent's Threat to Capitalism as We Know It"

"October 20, 2002: America's Real Boogeyman and Why You Should Be Afraid"

The papers on the floor fanned out in history's arc. Each event a previously unimaginable high water mark until we all drowned. Returning to the laptop screen, I was re-watching each of Insurgent's broadcasts trying to determine the exact date when I realized I had to stop him. Thank goodness for the Internet.

"There is nothing more deflating, America, when our true patriots who love their country so much they speak out against its direction are prosecuted. True patriots know: 'Its your country, right or wrong. If right to keep right. If wrong to make right." At that I closed the browser and I almost continued with American Insurgent's famous closing line of 'By any means'. Catching my own voice I clicked the laptop lid closed, leaned back in the plain black cotton task chair and tried to calculate how long I had until the Department of Homeland Security goons were at my door. I spent fifteen minutes watching broadcasts and reminiscing. DHS was probably alerted to someone watching the videos five minutes in. Two minutes to organize a team and thirty minutes to travel meant I was twenty-two minutes until an infamous black bag spirited me away.

Out of habit more than anything else I picked up those newspapers. Fingering the pages as if they were radioactive, I was reminded of my purpose and tossed them into the nearby unlit fireplace where so many other pieces of evidence had been destroyed by Insurgent: Rube Goldbergian blue prints, fingerprinted drinking glasses made unusable to DHS by their cremation, hard drives first demagnetized, then drilled through and finally smelted using some charcoal, a shop-vac on reverse and a wheel hub. Paranoiacs who followed Insurgent thought he was one of their own. So too, tea partiers, conspiracy theorists, libertarians, Quebecoise separatists, Hamas and the liberals - those slight of hand artists.

Checking my watch, I realized I had frittered away another two minutes for the former wrestlers turned DHS agents to shatter my door and fatefully decide to garrote wire my Adam's apple or not. Grabbing the over night pack stashed under the computer desk, my left hand sliding the industrial magnet across the laptop's hard drive, I watched the screen's billions of pixels shoot across like a glittering comet following the magnet, Insurgent's words after the last broadcast oscillating between my left and right ear drums.

"When the victor gets the history, truth is the real loser." Insurgent told the group of students listening at his feet.

I chimed in, proudly, "Hence the creation of LOST CAUSE in NYC. The government couldn't guarantee a victory against a specific body or group so they ensured they controlled the messages, no matter what."

"Exactly. And that's why we must create the headlines and send the messages. In a complacent world of sheep, we will be the new invisible hand. We will speak truth to power."

*****

It was the day after this conversation that the world and I shuddered tremendously; lost our bowels at the sight of our own creation and the thought of society's cage's linchpin being blown off their hinges. I have a long way to go before you people understand my rocketing toward this existence. Before you see I was nothing more than a monkey in a space capsule. We all were players on his stage. We just didn't know it. Even as I ran away from his destruction, by following his escape route, I was literally following in his footsteps.

*****

Down the fire escape I swam, lurching at each landing's right angles until duffel bag and I hit terra firma haltingly. The contingency plan had always been Hope's for a couple of hours, sewer, swim. Drilled into my head for this day that Insurgent saw and I didn't. Don the hard hat and safety orange vest slung in the bag, pre-sullied work gloves and pick up the manhole cover at the end of the alleyway. As I spun around to lift the iron manhole cover, two black vans following each other a little too closely crossed the end of the urban tunnel/alleyway. Frozen with manhole cover half peeled back, my breath was a brick shoved in my lungs. I must have reminisced a little too long over the hero/demon. Thankfully they were too preoccupied by the belief that I was still sitting at my desk, or computer, fingering my evil handlebar moustache whilst cackling in my black fedora. Their close-mindedness was my advantage.

*****

It's funny to think of the day we created the retreat at Hope's. Insurgent still hadn't explained his plan to me, just snippets of dogma that, well, felt right at the time. Good in that Aristotelian capital 'G' good that he believed we all aspire to and I now know as totalitarian bullshit. Hindsight plus the contacts of being literally and figuratively dragged through the mud equals twenty-twenty vision.

*****

"We need a place of safety after their eyes have been opened." Insurgent said with blazes in his grey eyes.

"Wh-why? If we're the good guys then why wouldn't we be safe? If God is with us, then who could be against us?"

"I'm sorry, what do the jihadists shout exactly as they press the trigger to splatter their grey matter like a water balloon?"

"Allah akbar." I said as plainly as possible. At this point, I knew not to push Insurgent past his patience. I once saw him shatter the porcelain jaw of a half heartedly invested hipster who thought she could join the insurgency in the weekends and still shop at big box mart during the workweek.

"Exactly. God is great. Good, Terror, Stock Market Collapse, too-big-to-fail. They're all just boogey men and scarecrows when we get too close and see the pixels in their ideology. We see that. The public will see that soon. But _they_ don't. They've been drinking the Kool-Aid for far too long. Once we lift the curtain on the wizard, all of Oz will be on our side except the evil monkeys. They've got to see their entire worldview collapse before they get it.

"So we've got to trudge through five miles of sewer to be safe? I thought safe houses were like a friend's place or something."

"If they can see what shoes I'm wearing to know its me using a Peacekeeper ROV, what makes you think a cabin in Thomas Edison Memorial Park will hide you? Down here there is no cell reception, too much background noise for directional microphones and hundreds of years of social taboos saying we would never pick here. That's why _." That's exactly what I meant - thinking back, Insurgent's logic was escape proof._

Sewer Retreat

Through my daydream déjà vu, beloved, I plugged the laptop into the hard line fiber optic cable modem we spliced into up topside. I had no idea how Insurgent got five miles of fiber optic cable, but at least it bought me an hour while they traced the IP address, then five miles of wire underground. The sewer retreat was never designed for an extended stay. No fortifications, weapons, rations. Just an echo-chamber escape pod through which to reach the water of the Hudson and eventually Canada. What it allowed me to do was to try to tell my story. With the laptop booted up, suitable backdrop in place - a high-jacked photo studio's backdrop reel gave me flexibility based on my whims. Right now I was feeling the red grid of lasers over an infinite black field. I initiated my video feed intending to begin my video alibi.

*****

Suddenly, before I could say the first words of my broadcast the red warning light was activated by what turned out to be a motion detector. I switched off the laptop's camera and flipped on the security program to view the cameras within the tunnel system. Insurgent's voice asserted itself from my déjà vu, reminded me in my ear, "You can never have too many backup plans."

Lets just say I didn't used to be a planner. However, with five DHS gorillas dragging their knuckles and two tracking dogs with them about two miles into the tunnels already, I'm glad Insurgent was. At this point, I automatically chucked the laptop down the nearby tube, pulled the release latch on the gate behind me while scooping up the unused overnight bag. A ten-foot fishing boat awaited me for my second escape. Hopping into the boat I pulled away, slowly at first, so the DHS couldn't tell my method of escape by engine noise. Traversing down the long, narrow tunnel actually made me claustrophobic as the low overheard made it seem like I was traveling faster than I was in reality. Since the engine was barely more than idling and I was marginally able to hold down my breakfast, I dared not push it any faster and tried to avert my eyes from the rhythmically pulsing of the brick pattern laid overhead. That's when my eyes spotted a RC car's controller placed next to the throttle of the boat's dashboard. Taped next to the neon green of the handle were two "C" batteries and a note that said, "Use me at the mouth of the escape -AI." Not one to steer from a plan, I used my non-steering hand to pop off the batteries by breaking the tape and then patiently fiddling with the order of the polarities until the red power light glowed it's cherry red. I was moments from the mouth of the sewer that fed its waters into the Hudson and so I pulled the trigger on the trigger/wheel assembly of the RC remote. Nothing happened and so I pulled it again, waiting for a gate to drop or boulder to close off the route behind me.

When something finally did happen, there arose an explosion multiplied in sound and strength by the tenfold echo of the compact tunnel system. My rib cage rattled with the vibrations of the explosion. Without thought I swung my head down and - thanks to my past experiences - covered my eyes with my hands as a loud, "Oh, shit!" was jettisoned from my lungs. Since the fishing boat was nothing more than aluminum siding with a motor and two 1X8's for seating, my back was assailed by debris of varying weights, the worst of which hit my mid-back. Catacombs of pain immediately burrowed into my back and spine after the shock of sensory overload dissipated. I dared not move. The thought of looking back never occurred to me. The only idea running through my mind was that Insurgent had planned for this to happen exactly in this way. Just like everything else that had transpired since we met.

I had to get to a place of safety; the open waters of the Hudson right after an enormous explosion most likely killing five DHS agents and two dogs was certain to be filled with media coverage helicopters, Metro PD, ambulances, DHS forensic teams, the city's bravest, al Jazeera reporters, the Coast Guard, Army Core of Engineers, FEMA satellite trucks, the state power authority inspectors, crowds of rubbernecking boaters, motorists and pedestrians as well as food trucks to feed the division's worth of humanity massed because of me and the ideas I once fell head-over-heels in love with.

I had burst into a reservoir, bright light exploding on my face, shrinking my pupils to poppy seeds. Another boat pulled up along my starboard side and asked, "What the hell happened here?! You see it?"

Now what the hell was I to do? I've been caught on camera during the LOST CAUSE bombing, the footage of which has received literally two days of non-stop airplay now and was photographed with Insurgent prior to the Awakening and somehow this guys not at DEFCON 1. I couldn't attack him - I was doubled over from pain, not to mention the ethics of killing an innocent onlooker. I quickly blurted out, "HolyChristdidIeversomebodyaughttogogetheCoastGuardmyradioisbrokeI'llgo!" I slammed the throttle wide open and peeled off towards the shore. Well _that_ could have gone better. Spitting across the Hudson and towards the nearest dock was my only hope of making it before the dendritic organism that is now American security arrived and identified me. There would be no trial that way. "Enemy Combatant known as American Insurgent Killed. Massive DHS Victory Celebration to be Planned," would be broadcast like a lighthouse on TV, internet, digital newsstands and magazines.

My parents would be interviewed and quoted as calling me a "loner" and "always very polite. We had no idea this was coming." Mom in tears, face in her hands and Dad saying he tried to intervene when I exhibited the warning signs but by then it was too late. Arm around Mom, shaking reassurance into her. The picture would be distributed worldwide in minutes of my hanging. With that image in mind, I willed the boat to make it the extra mile I needed to cross to the shore.

Nearing a small t-shaped wooden dock I quickly grabbed the overnight bag and painfully slogged over the side of the fishing boat into waist deep water. Just as I began walking on completely dry land, the first news helicopter swung overhead with Coast Guard and Al-Jazeera machines visible behind _. Here it comes. The parasites._ Gaining life-sustaining entertainment as that very force itself escapes in wisps of smoke or thermite convulsions from others. Its a noted circumstance that began once high-def television arrived and illustrated in mind-massaging detailed pixels what the insides of zombies looked like when slow motion exploding like a carnival balloon, that people actually began using the internet as a means to seek scenes to rubberneck in person. "Ten eighty p" resolution's imagined reality supplanted its predecessor.

Quickly, I flew up the dock's wooden step and around the Coast Guard building; reporting the event was tantamount to turning myself in. Walking briskly through the flow of Coast Guards must've looked like a denim and polo-ed version of Frogger: moving through one line's opening only to be jostled back a line; always fighting the flow of uniformed guards with overly polite sirs or ma'am's and the tips of the imaginary hat. Eventually making it to the other side meant escape in the immediate term. While the original plan - well as much of it as I was told - had me riding the boat up until Glens Falls, now it meant using motorized transport by any means. Walking down Tippman Boulevard past a convenient mart made me realize I also had no food whatsoever. My stomach picked a fine time to grumble.

Inside the overnight bag I knew there was one hundred dollars in tens, so money wasn't an issue. Being spotted was. All it took was one hardwired button push and DHS was immediately called and the surveillance feed of the store went to DHS HQ in Langley via secure virtual private network software and the free wireless internet provided by Uncle Sam himself. The hardwiring security button was an innovation brought to you by Defcon™, makers of the equally fine million volt home security perimeter or car security perimeter, Perimeter TM; Hounds ™, the famous bionic implanted super aggressive German Shepherds used by the uber rich to protect themselves from possible suicide bombings of their complexes and Get-Back™, the two hundred decibel GPS enabled signal whistle. "Get-Back ™, when the jihadists just won't take no for an answer."

I turned down a side road with a derelict dumpster whose cavern was empty except for magazines whose titles were sun bleached and mildew addled to crepe paper strength. "US Congress to Pass Tariffs on Mexican Chinchilla Fur"; "Starlet's Citizenship Questioned but America Wonders: Where'd She Get that Nose"; "Dr.'s Finally Achieve the Impossible in Cure for Red Hair". Seeing no rats I hurtled myself at its rim, hoping my inertia would carry me inside. Instead my pudginess clanged the metal husk, which vibrated gong-like, causing a flock of nearby seagulls to flee to the skies. _That's about the only thing to ever run from me._ I scampered inside the dumpster. Once inside I sifted through the bag, praying that Insurgent left some note, holographic facial distortion projector, anything to allow me to operate in public without being sniped from a mile away. One hundred dollars, check. Pay as you go cell phone, check. Tablet computer for the remaining broadcasts, check. Handlebar moustache, check. Matches, check. Nothing else; not even a baseball cap to cover my head. _Really? A fake handlebar moustache is supposed to get me past facial recognition software on 3D HD cameras and the omnipresent Sentron™ personal body aroma detector?_

Seeing as I had no other recourse, and, "Use me!" Was Sharpied TM on the side of the spirit gum, I painted the spirit gum on my upper lip and sides of my mouth, accidentally getting some on my lips. I quickly jammed the moustache onto my upper lip, smoothing the bristles down the side of my face as if they were porcupine quills and resigned myself to fate. Not to the fate that I helped create, but that which I left Insurgent to create for me.

Placing my hand on the dumpster's inside lip I pushed up, lunging at the sidewall begging my arms to push me up. As my elbows formed acute angles in their effort, they quivered Tacoma Narrows like until their terminal failure. Dropping strait down, my eye socket's trajectory found my fist squarely. The world dimmed.

*****

The hooded figure of American Insurgent stood before me, newspaper in one hand; his typical stance- arms crossed feet shoulder width apart with locked knees. We were back on campus in the PETA turned United State Citizens Against Iraq Now headquarters. Basement of the student radio station. I was seated on a wicker chair, next to the mixer board as Hope entered through the sound proofed glass door and onto the industrial grey rug.

"We're all set to go." Hope interjected.

"Thanks for your service to the cause. When this is all over, the American people will thank you and shower you with praise. You are the movement's mother. Stan, go with Hope and complete your task." Instructed Insurgent.

As I left the wood paneled room, Hope blindfolded me, no hooded me, and zip-tied my hands behind my head. Hope led me by forcing my hands down onto my head and used force to direct me left or right. Deprived of my sight, our footsteps pounded like drums off of walls that must have been angled in, as I could feel their presence. Our route traced the outline of a labyrinth until Hope kicked my knees out and my tailbone landed in a chair. I was somehow simultaneously slapped and debagged. My pupils dilated to a single grain of gunpowder, confronted with a stolen DHS InstaGrain TM migraine inducing interrogation light.

Hope, transformed to ghoulish outline behind migraine's oscillatory focus and one million lumen's light, "What is your name?"

"Wha- Stan..." Suddenly Insurgent's training struck me as the pulses between heartbeats, migraine throbs.

"Stick to silence. They cannot prosecute silence."

I put on my best mask of stoicism and turned my head forty-five degrees away from the light as we'd been instructed.

"That's your stoicism?" Laughed Hope who now flicked off the InstaGrain TM and returned to her feminine silhouette. "It looked more like you were trying to pee while having a UTI."

"You try taking an InstaGrain TM to the face and tell me of stoicism."

*****

_Beloved, the moment I shut my mouth, I averted my eyes from Hope, forgetting about her repeated interrogations with DHS. Being the head of a blacklisted college activist group, she was black bagged and subjected to seven hours of what I could only stand for thirty seconds. Initially, they'd only wanted the names of her group's members. Trouble is, once she gave those up, weeping, DHS kept pushing for more. Anyone recently come back from over seas? Anyone visit that Muslim rabble rousing city of Seattle in the past year? How about people who need money desperately? Sick family members? Asthma? Anyone's mother knit them Afghans lately? Hoping to end the interrogation quicker through cooperation, Hope gave them everything. Naïveté, thy name is innocence. DHS black bagged everyone she gave. I was in a twenty four hour reading room of Butler library when they found me, reading,_ The Art of War, _of all things. We were the first to receive tattoo bar codes called National Identity Cards to hide their invasiveness. Our families were the first logged into Sentron_ TM _under the guise that it was less invasive than our bar codes but still of great import to National Security. We were pioneers._

*****

Hope startled me out of my emotionless nostalgia. "You fail. They can't-"

"Prosecute silence." I finished, "I know. Its just that the damn Insta-"

Hope wheeled around on her heels and backhanded me across the face. With the InsaGrain TM effects still lingering the world slowed, dimmed, as if the world's backlight was cut to half. "We're cutting you out Stanley. You're a liability to freedom and you're too weak for democracy."

Being left to darkness, I had no clue how long I lay motionless. Minutes. Hours, maybe. By this point in my life, I've been concussed so many times that my blackouts were more like narcoleptic episodes; frequent, random and startling in their ease.

September 13th, Again

I realize that the arc of this story, dearest, is shattered. So is my concentration. Let me get back to a more linear moment. Continuing the story of my attempted escape.

*****

Waking up in the dumpster startled me. I looked around at the pulpy magazine covers that peppered the base and shook the present into myself. That was a portion of the movement I worked hard to forget. Why my brain had chosen to relieve the night of my greatest failure, I couldn't understand. _Grrrraawwrrp_. At least my stomach could provide some distraction from my self-loathing and a sense of purpose. Still uncertain of my balance, I stood up and nearly screamed. Partially from the pain in my eye socket and lower back, but mostly because I forgot I had spirit gummed my mouth shut. There was no moving it unless I wanted to rip the fleshy parts of my lips off. How I was going to purchase food without getting caught I couldn't figure out. For the second time I resigned myself to a fate seemingly out of my control and cautiously exited the dumpster.

With my feet on the pavement and escape bag in my hand I breathed a sigh of relief. _No more concussions as far as the eye can see._ I headed towards the convenience store I had passed marching through the Coast Guards and silently said a prayer _; they can't prosecute silence_. I reminded myself. The store had the usual GPS enabled bar code scanner at the door entrance and my pulse quickened. There were three other people in line behind me and it was all I could do to look down, outstretch my wrist and prepare for the automatically triggered local electric perimeter system to light me up like a NYC billboard. _Bonk_. The screen glowered red with the perfectly squarely appearing words: READ ERROR in hazard yellow. I placed my arm in front of the scanner a second time. _Bonk_. Read error again. The cashier waved me in.

"Damn thing's been on the fritz since it rained last week. Come on in, friend."

Nodding my head and humming.

"In fact, everyone behind you can come on in." He laughed wearily, "If you're a terrorist, SentronTM'll nab ya anyways." Saying it mostly to himself.

_Shit_. There's no faking personal pheromones and no chance of going two for two on the antiterrorism measures. I stepped up to the store's Sentron TM hose, installed in its government mandated thirty-six inch height two feet inside the door to the building. The customers behind me misread my apprehension as annoyance.

"'Least its not a government office open to the public, man. If I give one more DNA sample just to deliver my wife flowers at the post office, I'm going to run out of cheek cells _and_ patience!"

I flicked my head up in awkward silent acknowledgement and spun back to the Sentron TM. I picked up its tube and suctioned it to my armpit in the same manner they'd shown us all in the national broadcast introducing the safety measure. I even hummed the jingle subconsciously. _Just flick the switch and let it sniff!_ I closed my eyes and waited for the alarms, the imagined instant death of the electrified perimeter to be applied. Another friendly yet irritating bonk. READ ERROR. _JustLetMePassJustLetMePassPleaseDearGodJustLetMePass._

"Ah, what the hell!" Shouted the cashier, more annoyed than angry. "Can't see why we're scanning around here anyway. You Coast Guard folk all work so dang hard it can't get a whiff of anything besides B.O. How long ya gotta keep that douchy handlebar moustache, seaman recruit? Still the same three months?" Chuckled the cashier who then drifted off into nostalgia by looking up and away from the door. I responded by shrugging and smiling a closed lip painful smile. _Pure bullshit luck. He couldn't have planned that happening._

Either way, the tension building up at the base of my skull lessoned a bit. I began to search through the store for anything palatable and ready made. Walking up and down to isles of nutritionally void processed bagged food I finally decided on a cold hot dog to reheat in the store's microwave housed in the back corner of the store near the coffee machines. I shoved the hot dog into the box and slammed the door; it moved easier on its hinges than I expected. Nervously I looked around, glancing over my shoulder and into the ceiling mounted mirror to see if I had caught anyone's attention. The cashier was busy cashing out Mr. DNA donor and the only other person in the store was a woman wearing a fedora and trench coat, examining the macaroni and cheeses an isle away. The trio had more important things to do than eye a seaman recruit with a handlebar moustache. Two minutes couldn't go by fast enough. Remembering my previous slam of the microwave, I carefully closed the door and spun on my heels, attempting to be as seaman-like as possible. Not knowing anything about the Coast Guard, I pulled my shoulders back walking as if I wanted to crack a walnut in my ass and strode to the cash register. Cheekless Joe had already cashed out and as I strode up to the register a sudden wave of fear struck me - how the hell was I going to cash out if I couldn't manage more than a simple, "mm-hmm"?

I started with a repeat of the guy-hi head-nod and placed the dog on the counter along with a soda from the mini fridge near the cashier's counter. The clerk smiled amiably enough.

"So, here to investigate the huge explosion down by the water?" He flicked his head towards the dock I had just come from.

"Mm-hmmm." Praying the conversation would be done at that.

"So what do you think did that? Was it Osma 'gain?" He said with inflectionless distance in his voice.

"Mmmm-Aaww." That'd done it. I'd stretched the spirit glue too far. It had split in random places and popped like bubblegum on a seven year-old face, sticking to the "douchy" moustache.

"Boy...what the -" was all I'd heard from the cashier before the 3D high def facial scanner had gotten its own read error. Too bad that electrifies first and asks questions later. The government issued electric shock sign was lit blood red, pulsing arterially. I spun on my heals and managed to hear the charge of the perimeter field crackle in the air as if a hundred whips splayed the air surrounding my eardrums. Then my nerves all fired at once with ten times their normal sensitivity. My body contorted in response to the fire lit just inside my skin; every neuron screamed in a choir of disconcordant electrical signals such that I knew I had burns on the inside of my flesh. I tried to peek through my eyelids to take stock of the world around me, but they too were succumbing to neural napalm. I had had enough. Letting go, I drifted off to nothingness when I felt my skin's fire extinguish itself and two arms prop me up onto my knees. Snippets of sentences were all I heard between my trips into nothingness.

"Get back! The terror..."

"...his mouth..."

"Taking...Mexican chinchilla..."

Then scattered firm voices demanding silence from me, the cashier. My limp hands were slung behind my back, jabbing my shoulders forward. Velvety darkness washed over me even though it was the middle of the day and as my brain began to fire its own synapses panic rose from the pit of my stomach and out my mouth first in the form of screams.

"No, no, no, no, no! I didn't do anything. I tried to stop...ugh!" A small fist was thrown at my paunch mid sentence with a grunt that set off alarms in my memory. I immediately shut up. Even though I was still bagged, I put on my mask of stoicism. I knew what awaited me when I would be unbagged.

****

It was at this point, dear audience that I feared I would never get to speak to you; to tell my Truth. Though my brain was foggy, it somehow made its way to May 1st, 2003 when I had made an end of the year stop home while awaiting final exam grades. We were still those proud, terrorist-hunting-license-bumper-sticker toting people. Crowds sung the national anthem with roaring vocal chords; Flag Day was a big deal suddenly and at the 4th of July everyone fantasized about flying stealths and obliterating deserts instead of ambushing Red Coats marching in lines. We could do no wrong. As our president was about to remind us on broadcast television, we had just won the war. And as my parents were continually reminding me while visiting them at home, I was a terrorist.

*****

"Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States"

As the F-22's cockpit opened, the President unstrapped his harness and removed his helmet with two swift movements prior to descending the ladder. On the flight deck of the USS Vengence Before God, a podium stood in between two risers full of Navy crewmembers who themselves stood. Across the facade of the operations deck hung a sparkling banner that in front had a holographic bald eagle tearing through Iraq. Behind the eagle was the winged Pegasus in flat red with the words, "Buy American Oil" set ablaze. With a full military band playing on the flight deck, President addressed the nation.

"Ladies and gent'lman of Godfearin' 'merica. Victory has been achieved. Our enemies are beggin' for mercy while our hands are at their necks. " Hats spun into the air from the bleachers and with the accompanying gust of wind, spun into the ocean. "We've lost great treasure and blood during this 'ard year at war. Yet, we will be comp-n-sated for our losses. As we celebrate today, 'merica has begun settin' up Freedom Rigs 'cross the desert. These rigs are designed with the help of our coalition of th' willin' to deliver low cost oil to 'merica and 'mericans only."

At this, my family's TV screen cut to stealth bombers flying across the Iraq country side bombing huts; shanties that not even desolate describes: corrugated sheet metal buildings framed with whatever metal scraps happened to float down the hill. Roofing made of, it looked like, bags of rice with American flags on it. Voice over of a country star singing "Beer for My Men, Death for Terrorists" and oil rigs spiraling out of the ground where bombs had simultaneously exploded. An orgy of violent capitalism ejaculated across each pixel.

As that was happening, my father walked in to my former living room, suit coat wrapped over his arm, briefcase in the other hand as he plopped himself into his favorite recliner - worn such that the cushions resembled his behind, back and arms in relief so exactly that need we make a life sized sitting replica, we had our mold.

"Those towel headed bastards finally give up? What are you and your friends going to do now? Start your own terrorist organization here in America?" At that, my father dropped himself with the precision the American Air Force touted into his void space of the armchair.

I sighed and spun around to face him. "We were asking for peace. What's wrong with wanting to end the killing of people for cheap oil?" As the words ran from my mouth, both his mouth and mine went slack simultaneously. He immediately lit up, blood rising in his face in such a visible manner that I thought he was going to transform into a mercury thermometer and gush red out of his top.

"Peace? Peace! THEY - Iraqi's - THEY didn't want peace. They wanted blood and they got it. Now it's our turn to extract our own. We will not stop until every one of them is buried or burnt. That is what they asked for, and that's just what we're going to give them." As if transfixed, he sat back into his chair, staring directly at the TV, as if waiting.

"I guess so." As I said this, I slunk away towards the door. "The President's declared victory. It looks like we're going to get peace after all." Turning to leave the room, I caught my dad's eye. "Dad, its been almost two years since Uncle Mark's..." at this a balloon caught in my which blocked anything but a muted gagging noise.

"Murder. Your uncle was murdered by those foreigners. And don't you forget that." Standing up again, my father usually didn't move past five foot ten. Here, I remember his figure growing in height as the next few sentences rang out with the President's words now renewed from the flight deck of the destroyer. A strange echo took effect in that my father's words followed those from the television a millisecond after and with such a reverberation that I felt more than the room was a cave in which the President himself was speaking.

"We

We

will

will

keep

keep

America

America

secure

secure"

Turning and pointing his finger so close to my eye that it bent my eyelashes, "And don't you forget that. Even if you're all of a sudden some star terrorist, I am an American first and your father second. You and your liberal college friends..."

With my father being absorbed into the recliner, that was how I remembered the evening ending. My teen ears didn't listen for the rest of the President's announcements that May Day. Had they, I would have heard about the USA Patriot Act's first outline in public. The President gave Americans more of what they wanted - righteousness.

"And it makes sense then, that we pro-tect ourselves both physically and also eco-nom-ic-ly. Therefore, I'm askin' Congress to write a law that does the followin': cre-ates a super agency tha' collects all data from 'merican in-tell-igence agencies and gets to be the decider. Give them full pow'r to carry out th' law. We'll call it, 'Homeland Security' and they'll be in charge of anythin' that has to do with securin' th' homeland. Secondly, we need to pro-tect 'merican jobs. No more sendin' money pas' 'merican borders. You want a chinchilla coat, you buy 'merican chinchilla! Anythin' else is now criminal! Tha' goes for coffee, technology an' ideas too!"

The crowd of sailors and officers began chest bumping each other with the result that some rebounded terrifyingly close to the ship's perimeter. Awoken from their patriot stupor seeing their compatriots tumbling over into the undisclosed ocean, they wrung the gallery deck's safety lines with white knuckles, dangling precariously over the edge of their deck.

"Additionally", at this the President coughed and peered left and right, "'Scuse me. What's more, I need all true and red blooded 'mericans to support this bill because it will allow us to kick terr'ists asses! May the Catholic God bless all Catholic 'mericans!"

Present

"He...Insurgent's dead because of him."

"But you knocked him out. What'd..."

"...threat to the mission. He wanted to get people..."

If I black out any more, my life would be a high school art film. The voices and the double-dutch of what sounded like a moving truck's hold skipping over bridge joints rang my bell enough for me to rejoin the world of the conscious. I was still zip-tied, hands behind my head. I used my shoulder to push myself upright, back against the side of the moving truck. _We must be on the highway._ There's no telling where I'm being taken, but judging by my chauffeur's choice of vehicle, DHS will not be hosting me at one of their nearby detention centers.

*****

The hours - minutes, seconds - passed. At first I tried finding a door, hatch; to escape and fling myself on the mercy of Atropos and asphalt. With the hood securely in place and me too out of shape to sling my hands down and my legs toward myself, I sat and reflected. There was no denying I had gotten into a whole lot of trouble with only the smallest single watt of a clue as to what I was doing. The club, the one you know as USCAIN, was a comfortable social fit. I could follow and not be weird for not saying much. Hell, my brand of membership was ideal for them: join, show up to everything because I had nothing else, listen with fond admiration and do whatever small chore was assigned to me so I could, "help the greater movement". It was when you questioned Hope or Insurgent that your value was questioned. Your loyalty doubted.

The days after the college protest scene were some of the most doubt riddled and socially isolated days I had seen. What little confidence the club had instilled in me was carrion for the predatory thoughts of depression. Ken was no company unless you carried the numbers 34DD and PETA was disbanded and forbidden to reorganize with any combination of members' names that Hope had given them in her second interrogation with DHS. In passing on campus members would smile then check around themselves for the boogey man specter of black bag empowered campus security. When they entered - read: tattooed - us I envisioned riots of the youth spectrum clashing against police and being hit with high pressure water at close range. Instead of a roar, the masses whimpered. Our sentence was carried out live via LOST CAUSE to the nation's pride. No bruises were left that day. No dogs unleashed on unruly, rebellious malcontents. There were only fluorescent lamp tans on our necks from staring at the person's shoes in front of us as we waited for what the press dubbed, "Scarlet I's". Hope had resisted, struggled against her zip ties, giving her virgin flesh to the tattoo machine reluctantly, knowing she would never truly get it back; would never remember with pride the name of the boy who took that part of her as if it were freely given.

Three days after being tattooed I received a message from someone named "AI" on Facebook. I had assumed it was a fake user name and immediately deleted the message without reading it. The very next day I had received another. In the days before privacy controls, I checked who was friends with AI and noticed it was everyone from PETA. I immediately accepted both the friendship and the message. Someone was trying to reunite.

*****

"WCORE basement 23:00 tomorrow."

I skipped all of my classes for the rest of the day and sleeping that night wasn't easy. I anxiously stared at the clock in my room waiting until twenty till so I could leave and be in the radio station's basement a couple of minutes early. Ken and Ms. Right Now didn't appreciate my insistence of sitting at my computer screen until my predetermined time, checking my messages every five minutes to ensure nothing had changed. Nothing did. At exactly 10:49 pm I clicked shut my laptop case, grabbed my fall coat and left Ken and Zeta-Oops-a-lot Barbie to their own devices.

Walking down the road towards the radio station, I had albatrosses flapping in my stomach. We could be bagged for reuniting; labeled enemy combatants again and given a free ride to an all-inclusive stay at Guantanamo Bay Prison. The thought paralyzed me in the middle of the path towards the radio station. I could be watched right now. In admittedly not my finest moment I darted my eyes, swiveled my head sweeping the area for anyone not perfectly in their place. That was easy; I was the only one out. But to arrive without being seen was a whole different story. I zigzagged behind trees; crouched behind benches and even did a summersault into the shadow of a nearby building. At one point a bird swooped overhead and the sensation of movement froze me in place, mid stride between park bench and knee height boxwood shrub. The wind slowly snuck past me, making me shudder and glance skyward as if acknowledging an omniscient narrator, telling me to quit screwing around and go to the meeting. Besides, if DHS really wanted to bag me, I was powerless to stop it. My arm was a constant reminder of that fact. Realizing this, my cheeks flushed and embarrassment fueled more deliberate strides towards the basement of WCORE.

At the entrance to the basement was tapped a sign, "Leave cell phones here - AI" and a basket of phones of all varieties sat beneath _. That's a bunch of awful trusting people_. Knowing better, I held onto my phone, switching it into my jacket pocket and swung the wooden door covered with yellowed egg crate foam open. There wasn't a sound as I stepped through the paint-flecked threshold and onto the entirely soundproofed engineering room. From behind the door appeared most of the members of PETA - except for Hope. My spirits and my head dropped quicker than a dead albatross into the sea.

Marc must have noticed this and approached me, even though we were introduced only once at a PETA meeting. "Wild times, man. I was worried I'd be the only one. I'm glad you sent the message to meet up. Since-"

"I didn't send anything." I interrupted.

Marc's enthusiasm to see me dropped too. "Welp, I didn't think you'd have the guts to do anything. Must've been Hope." With that, he rejoined the others who were marveling at the control board panels on the wall parallel to the still open door. I stepped backward separating myself from the groups as they chit chatted about our tattoes, the new war, the recent attempts to hijack more planes using plastic explosives in would-be hijackers' underwear.

Marx was proud of how his new tattoo could pick up women at bars. "Now, when I buy a drink, I make sure my sleeve is rolled up so when I grab a drink, I flash it towards the girl next to me. Immediate conversation starter."

"My parents saw the coverage from LOST CAUSE and wouldn't let me come home. Mom said she couldn't have some commie anti-'merican daughter making all the neighbors think we wear towels and hate Jesus." Connie said in a far off voice that trailed into introspection. A few of the PETA-ers around her shook their heads in a resigned agreement.

"I thought to be an American meant we could speak out in protest." I said quietly to myself more than to anyone around me.

"It used to, Stan." I had jumped almost into Hope's arms as she braced herself across the doorframe.

"It will, soon enough. We will make America a place to be proud of, again. Stan, is it?" Outstretched before me was a perfectly manicured hand connected to a crisp double-breasted black suit complete with pocket square. The perfectly parted black haired man before me could have been an Armani model: ninety degree cornered chin and matching cheek bone so high that his face was more cheekbone than forehead. Smiling there at me I imagined seeing his face next to a bottle of overly priced eau de toilette with a bikinied blonde in his lap, misted with crisp sea spray. He stepped forward.

"I appreciate your risking a second bagging to respond to a meeting that you knew nothing about. You can call me American Insurgent." At this sideways glances were exchanged in a domino effect around the room until the newly named Insurgent was the last man standing. "We've all been affected by the current state of American politics." Most scratched at their now scabbing tattooed wrists. "I too, have been bagged and interrogated at the 'Terrorist Day Riot' as LOST CAUSE called it. I was nabbed from the Republican circle and taken to the college hospital for interrogation."

Immediately I snapped back to that day, my first concussion, and the third door in the nurse's station behind which we knew neither who was there nor what was being done to them.

"There they threatened to lie to my family, tell them I moved to Iraq to serve as Saddam's hand servant. This way, when they made me disappear, no one would look for me. They taught me everything I needed to know abut the coming days. DHS, that is. Strength is derived not from the physical application but the mental upper hand. Coercion is stronger than rope and the deception of safety is the new opiate for the masses. So I propose we create an Insurgency. Of Democracy. Of truth. Of Americans, by Americans and for real Americans. The ones against torture. The real Americans against Imperialism under the guise of spreading freedom! The Americans who don't care where your chinchilla fur is from! For the Americans who want their country back!"

By this time the others in the group were chest bumping in a moment of déjà vu that I couldn't quite place; that vague familiarity of scene that was as unsettling as seeing your doppelganger.

"That's all well and good sounding, but what does that even mean? I mean, what are you proposing we do?" That question weighed on Marc's mind even though he bumped chests and high fived two around him. He kept fingering his bar code, playing it nervously like guitar strings.

Moving closer than Marc would have preferred, Insurgent's smile dropped astonishingly with his cheekbones making his eyes ghoulishly sunken. Towering over the now quivering Marc, Insurgent said, "What I propose we do is nothing less than awaken the America we know and if you aren't interested in fixing your homeland so it is safe and free again, then you can get out!" and with that Insurgent slapped Marc across the face and simultaneously pointed at the back of the egg create covered door.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Some violent stranger was offering some sort of revolution and everyone around me didn't even bat an eyelash while he tore into one of our own. I wanted to scream. I wanted to slap Insurgent and shake the now dreamy eyed Hope out of her near trance. I wanted to shout that this is all madness and we could be permanently bagged at any second for just being there.

Marc removed himself from the center of attention by standing nearer the instrument boards along the wall while Insurgent beguiled us with visions of America.

"...where LOST CAUSE didn't exist and individual rights were respected by government and neighbor alike. An America where we traded freely with our neighbors the increased manufactured goods and foodstuffs we've delved headlong into. The beautiful chinchilla coats of ethically treated animals who lived out their days in happiness until they met a peaceful and humane end, joining their brothers and sisters again in a stunning tapestry metaphor with America. There is no reason for America to be going down a path towards less economic mobility, less security, less freedom and less hope."

At the end of Insurgent's speech, Hope suggested they rewrite "A new, more beautiful and more 'now' version of 'America the Beautiful.'"

I stopped listening during the new notorious rendition of "America the Beautiful" that was repeated via webcast where any use of the phrase, "amber waves of grain" was replaced with "desert plains of chinchilla". Had I, I would have heard more of the dangerous rhetoric that led to the Awakening and murder of two thousand people.

*****

Dearly beloved, I was awoken from my contemplation by the abrupt stopping of the truck. How long had I been visiting skeletons in my closet, I wondered? A very real sense of dread had sunken itself in my chest and lodged itself somewhere between my lungs and my courage. It was time.

The bay door opened and as I expected, no sounds escaped human mouths except for soft grunts issued from the force exerted to pick me up by my prone arms. I was shoved forward and caught myself using the pavement and my chest to absorb the impact; thankful for once that I had more padding than health officials would recommend. Liquid warmth spread itself across my chest. My captors again followed protocol and wordlessly picked me up by my arms, half dragging me, as I felt lightheaded from my fall. I tried counting the number of doors we opened to help with my escape, but once I heard the electric popping of bar code scanners, I lost all hope of leaving under my own power. I was in some sort of an updated prison.

After four scanner-enabled doors and one old-fashioned lock and key, a chair was slid behind my kneecaps, forcing me to sit. Anticipating the InstaGrain TM upon being debagged, I turned my head and set my eyes at a forty-five degree angle to avoid most of the ensuing pain. It barely worked. The click of the InstaGrain TM warned me I was about to be blinded as my bag's protection was yanked off of my head. Only receiving a quarter dose of migraine was still enough to make my ears ring, and so I almost didn't hear Hope ask her first question.

"Name?" She demanded.

Silence in return, focusing as hard as I could on her left shoulder, just out of InstaGrain TM's scope. I swore to myself I'd act differently this time. That I'd stand for what I believe in and not be bullied around by someone else.

She swung her left hand across my face hard, but all I saw was a shadow cross the million lumens, and then dark circles filled my field of vision. "Name!"

"You know who I am." The InstaGrain TM clicked off and for the second time in my life Hope emerged as the operator on the other side of the device.

"Nice to see you again, Stanley." Hope hissed.

I had to maintain a defiant eye contact now. I couldn't let Hope know she scared the daylight out of me in her drab grey uniform issued to all USCAIN members on the day of the Awakening. "To what do I owe this chance meeting?" Gritting through my teeth, not in anger but to maintain a steady jaw.

"You've been a liability from the start, Stanley. Ever since you killed Insurgent, the group's fallen apart. You're going to publicly take blame for all of the deaths. You, sir, are our new scapegoat."

"You mean the deaths you and Insurgent planned without regard to anything? Not happening. And what about the group members Insurgent personally killed on the Awakening? Your friends, Hope, died because you fell in love with the words of Machiavelli's son himself. Were your friends' ends justified, by any means?"

Hope's face changed, ever so briefly, so that she looked pathetic and used in her uniform; as if a literal mask of stoicism dropped from her face and the skin beneath was pallid and ravaged by pot marks I had never noticed before. "You don't really get a say in the matter." The InstaGrain TM clicked on without warning before I could angle my face. Hope shrugged nonchalantly, reinvigorated with what sounded like hate. "Do what you want. I'll be back in twenty hours. That should be enough time to make your decision. Help him change his mind, Marc."

With that, a leather belt was strapped along my head and tied to the chair's spindles. Marc punched me in the left cheek so I was staring at the InstaGrain TM head on. Those pesky expanding circles fought for space in my field of vision. The stars strobed in front of me between circles such that I swore a big bang had created a universe of pain inside my skull.

For the first two, three minutes closing my eyes was enough. Soon, the light burnt through my eyelids and seared them as the sun in my recently big-banged universe. _What in the hell was I to do?_ The headache from Marc's fist was merging with the InstaGrain TM and my stoicism was eroding. All I could think of was to relive the events of the Awakening and forge a trail through the dense truths that I would use to continue to exonerate myself to the world.

Present, but Reliving the Past

With no hope of ever talking to you directly, beloved followers of truth, I wandered back to the events before the Awakening. Hope had kicked me over and left me to rot as she and Insurgent presumably gathered USCAIN to carry out their only half revealed plan. Every atom in Insurgent's plan had coalesced over the span of a few months to form the darkest matter in American history. In the lead up to the Awakening, USCAIN was carefully planting mis/information on the one free news source remaining - the web. It used Facebook to organize open events with vague titles like, "Collegiate Debate Heavily Monitored by US DHS Officials" or "Undergraduate Symposium of Non-Threatening Old Ideas" and members would invite people face to face to view but not join the event; that would leave a trail of evidence that Insurgent would find unacceptable. The group also left blatant messages on prominent news organization websites via free Wi-Fi hotspots with mirroring web servers so as to not be traceable to a specific locale. My favorite use was when I had convinced DHS that Saddam Hussein's grave was making posts when all the while I was sucking down Wi-Fi in the college's nurse's office. I thought the double-edged nod to the past was witty. As reports of terrorists using Saddam's gravesite as a Satanic meeting point to plant messages began rolling out of LOST CAUSE, USCAIN was rolling on the floor of the radio station laughing. Some of the messages left were vague reprimands of the current socio-political-military -industrial-espionage complex such as, "The people will 'awaken' to your controls and shake their shackles." or the more specific, "The Insurgency will retake your media outlets and liberate the news for the masses" on such and such a date. The former gained quizzical replies from moderators and public alike. The latter drove DHS insane trying to track down the posts and figure out which date was correct. That was the point. We knew they were watching everything at all times, so if they were flooded with enough information they would either chase their tail in some many circles they'd vomit, or call us an un-credible threat and leave us alone. Either way, we won.

As the group ramped up the media exposure, Insurgent began posting videos on YouTube in which he gave voice to the group's goals, threatening mass rebellion and even demonizing the terrorist groups who fought against the US but refused to fix the situations of their homeland.

"We take care of our own." Insurgent famously said of both the rising Insurgency and America. "For too long we've been feeding the poor of other nations and policing the scum of other cities. Its time we feed ourselves and police ourselves. Its time America cared about Americans again." In the feed Insurgent slammed his black-gloved fist down on a glass table that we edited to shatter and reform into a map of the United States. Fireworks erupted from behind the map to the tune of "Yankee Doodle". Tea Party-ers nearly creamed themselves over what they read as xenophobia. Hippies loved the bit about feeding our own poor. Insurgent loved the followers he was getting. At first it was a trickle: five, ten. Then, with his famous rebuttal to the capture of Saddam Hussein, Insurgent went viral.

The day Hussein was captured was a banner day for USCAIN. The federal government had just arrested a nine year old suspected of domestic terrorism for taking a spork to school the Friday before and Insurgent planned to lambaste the DHS goons who took the fourth grader out of her classroom in handcuffs when he heard the breaking news concerning Saddam Hussein. LOST CAUSE's news feed was constantly on in USCAIN's HQ and we therefore knew immediately that he had to go live instead of a pre-recorded video.

*****

"Fellow patriots, the past two days have provided even more reason for leaving the occupation of Iraq to the citizens of that country. As you know, yesterday Asis Anisaii was bagged for domestic terrorism at Washington Charter School for True Americans." Around these words Insurgent used snarling air quotes to remind viewers of the Patriot Act's reach; that schools must be renamed in a manner so that all students know America is their one True Country, no matter where they're originally from. His dimples reemerging, Insurgent's winning smile reappeared as his bag literally stretched in width thanks to his cheeks expanding.

"As if that weren't enough cause to rise up and destroy the shackles of oppression we've chosen for ourselves, to return to the values that made us great, we now have further reason to demand our exit from Iraq as well." Cheshire cat-like, Insurgent's smile seemed to push his ears back, as witnessed in the change of shape of his disguise. "Saddam Hussein has been captured. It's time for us to leave. Our time as colonizers and nation builders is over. Our time exploiting the Iraqi's status as a third world country for oil can now be over. Our country's youth and treasure can now return home and cease to be needlessly spent on a land that never asked to be helped. If the US Government refuses to see the new dawn, we will force them to Awaken from their drunken power-stupor. We will destroy LOST CAUSE and free the people to be themselves journalists of our new world."

*****

Well that did it. The direct threat to a government institution with a living voice prompted the DHS keyboard/monkeys to follow our videos and even go so far as to provide a written threat in the comment section for that video. Once that happened we gained thousands of followers. Well wishers who disagreed with an increased role in the Middle East; anarchists who, in a break from their orthodoxy, wanted in on the movement; doves wanting an end to all wars; American Chinchilla coat producers who anticipated a surge in demand from a new GI bill. The DHS posting even helped solidify our position within the former journalist community as they reviled what LOST CAUSE had done to their profession - they began to follow by the hundred. What's more, LOST CAUSE itself helped out by announcing the witch-hunt for us. It was the perfect free national publicity an insurgency needed.

_As the months marched on in step with the troops overseas, the group began to nervously question Insurgent as to his plan. Thomas, the last of the new recruits to join once allegedly questioned Insurgent's plan directly. I imagined the scene went something like this_.

*****

"Why Thomas," sneered Insurgent condescendingly, "the plan is to end LOST CAUSE and the ability to be complicit with it. Once that is done, America will actually have journalism again, and one day, may even be free from dictatorial power." With that, Insurgent slammed his fist into Thomas's cheekbone, breaking three bones in his skull and leaving his class ring's skull - a hawk holding an olive branch and the motto, _In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen_ \- molded into Thomas's right cheekbone. Thomas's jaw had to be wired shut.

As a good faith gesture towards the US government, Insurgent suggested we get citizens to sign a petition to disband LOST CAUSE and return civil journalism to the United States. He wanted to leverage the groundswell of public support gained in the past few weeks into gold ole' fashioned democratic action.

"We offer the dictators one last chance to save the souls of the American people. If you are truly listening to the _vox populi_ then you will heed our clarion call to return our rights. Otherwise we will not ask again what our country will do. We will do what we want with our country." No fancy editing needed there. USCAIN posted that unedited video and used the posts below as a perfunctory petition.

The group speculated that it was the bagging of every one of those petitioners that pushed Insurgent to actually attack LOST CAUSE. However, I had no doubt that looking back at the recording and the knowing way he used the word destroy that he planned the Awakening like a giant Goldbergian machine. I was to be the feather that toppled a TV that set off a blowtorch that decimated three skyscrapers. Hell, he practically said as much to me in person.

Present, Awaiting Death

So far reviewing the history of the movement awaiting Hope's promised death, I felt as white as the driven snow; sin free and in control of my own destiny. My consciousness was clear but my mind was far from it. The InstaGrain TM pointing at my still restrained head had achieved a mind-numbing effect, except replace numbing with drilling with a wooden dowel. Truthfully, I had been hoping to prove my innocence to you, dear nation. To a nation who had already presumed me guilty. Ignorance, being weak of will and lack of foresight were my true crimes. But as I inch closer to discussing the present state of my being, to the true present after these events have all happened, I promise to illuminate all, beloved.

****

Waking on the floor in Hope's prison headquarters I immediately felt the dread of inescapable failure; that the Fate sisters had knitted of my life a burial shroud already placed over my face and were about to cut the final skein free. For the first time in my life my inhibitions loosed with that realization. I leaned as far to my left as I could and then slammed my body to my right as quickly as I could. I impressed myself. I repeated the action blindly, not knowing what I hoped to achieve, but felt that sideways progress was better than none at all. This time I slid into what I presumed was a table leg because I felt - and heard - a larger and taller object slide once I jostled it. Then a plastic crash occurred and the room exploded with light. The InstaGrain TM had fallen off the table and clicked on thanks to the fall. While I was still zip-tied and on my back, I had done something right. I had a newfound hope of being able to control some part of this amusement park ride; as if I had created some fraction of momentum.

I searched the room for what I could use to escape. The room was bare save for the table and a floor drain about six feet away. It was my only choice. With any luck the circular drain cap had a sharp burr left tangentially connected to the circumference. After fifteen or twenty more full body scoots my hands felt the metal disc slide into grasp. They also felt the necessary burr drag itself deeply across my left wrist, releasing a warming sensation across my bound hands. I panicked, feeling the burial shroud slowly being draped over my face and so I let out a scream. It seemed to me that at that moment I had tried to join the symphony of thick skulled and skinned players at the cacophonous universal orchestra, but instead of creating a liberty-bell like siren song, my skull bonked hollowly in defeat. Might as well die trying. Quickly I rubbed the life-threatening burr along my restrictions. I had no clue if it would even work, but I'd seen James Bond do the same maneuver and so I was hopeful in the move. One minute into my attempt to saw free, I dropped the disk with a reverberating ringing noise that lasted twenty seconds as it raced out toward the room's concrete walls then back together above my head, crashing down disconcordant waved of sound. The familiar a-metronymic sway of abrupt syncope too washed over me. It was the silence, only interrupted by the drip of my blood, pooling beneath me that shook me slightly; nudged me to refocus. I slammed my shoulder twice to my left to grab the lost drain cap, deeply inhaling as my weakened hands dragged across the rough poured concrete nearest the drain. My hands flailed nervously at this, searching for the cap that only moments ago had screamed it location to me. At last I felt the perforated meal's now 98.5-degree slick surface and fighting the rising tide of nausea, rubbed the burr across my remaining bonds. I had been rubbing for so long I started to daydream about what my moment of freedom would be like.

My bonds pop, satisfyingly echo across the chamber. Hope's slack haw face in the prison's control room as I commandeer a human shield and deliver a tirade against the no holds barred activism she and Insurgent orchestrated. The rancorous way they decided to change America, for America, under the guise of Democracy and grassroots political movements they intended to mow down. Throwing down the meat shield in a cool manner as I strode to the moving van and hot wired the ignition, as only Mr. Bond and I could have done, and drove off.

Somewhere in my daydream I wrinkled me nose. Wiggled it side to side. Praying, channeling my inner Gene Simmons, I stretched my tongue past my upper lip to relieve the itch on my nose. Past the douchey moustache remnants - feeling most like a broom missing all but six of its coarsest bristles. I couldn't get past the upper most faux follicle. In a panic, I lunged forward as hard as I could, desperate to land the chair right side up and thereby hurl the offending skin cell of off my face in momentum.

As I slung myself forward, my arms naturally moved forward as well. My hands slung themselves and grasped the air in front of my chest as a baby does bottle. My moment of escape had begun, almost without me.

At that, I undid my head's restrain and cut the bonds tied to the feet of the chair. Standing, I felt a floating feeling come over me, so like any old hat at fainting, I sat back down. My wrist was still ejaculating blood with each pulse - I'd say roughly 129 bpm based on the frequency of the scarlet geysers. Using my intricate knowledge of medicine from Doogie Houser MD I tied my belt as a tourniquet around my forearm and ripped a swatch of cloth from my shirt and tied it directly to the wound.

"Ah, shit!" I muttered. I shot glances every which way. I didn't expect the stab of pain that would accompany clamping down on the ruptured artery. What's worse, it hadn't occurred to me until that moment that I might be monitored. That, as I struggled to loose my bonds, Hope was probably giggling to herself. I stood, feeling more confident in my balance. I strode to the door. I slowly turned the doorknob to avoid startling anyone on the other side.

"Stanley...pssshhhhsfff...crackle...sit down...pssshtt...you moron!" The disjointed loudspeaker message both startled me and sunk my mood. They had let me got to the brink of escape before they reeled me back in. "And don't die, either! You've got a last video-side-chat to star in." At that, the speaker slammed off with a resounding finality. My head sank into my hands. I sat down.

Present Day, Hope Brings Death

"It's time Stanley." was all Hope said, as she entered my room. She threw the usual Insurgent video props at me and I let them hit the ground as I stared off at 45 degrees to my left.

"Come now Stanley, your audience is waiting." I maintained my glare ahead as set.

"You don't...oh, why bother." With that Hope turned to walk away, the sound of her boot clicking across the cement pad, when the staccato of her gate abruptly stopped and con brioed towards me.

"Ungh!" With her last stride, Hope lunged at me with her entirety. She flew through me, ending up on the cement behind me as I toppled over the chair. Bandage torn off, my wrist was exposed to the grain of the cement; every second of friction was a hundred nightmares of pain - chest smeared a bloody skid mark in a game of tag. By the time I realized what had happened, Hope had landed on top of my chest and began pummeling me with the side of her fists. To my nose. My throat. My eye sockets. As she did so, flashes of her barcode cut the air in arcs. For a moment I watched them at their terminus zenith and trough, imagining a lifetime's worth of moments splayed out across it. What did Hope's timeline belie about her?

A baby Hope appeared as her tattooed wrist swung to its lowest, clutching a bottle three times her hands' size. Struggling to feed herself, she lay on her back beneath a mobile of pastel circus animals. The long neck giraffe rotates slowly around its mid-lumbar axis and as it turns itself to face Hope,feet appear. Black patent leather loafers to be precise. I'd recognize those pin-stripped-dry-clean-only's anywhere. Insurgent bent down and picked up Hope, cooing at her as he grabbed the bottle from her hands. She began screaming at the top of her infantile lungs. The scene gets over exposed in my mind's iris. Colors so bright they wash out then fade to black. And again. And again.

With Hope's last blow I awaken to the wet thud of skin slapping blood caked skin. Hope ravaged me. "I'll...plat!..do it. " I gurgled through blood filled nose. The beating stopped. Hope threw the day's newspaper at my head and it stuck to my already swollen, blood slicked face.

*****

My wardens had taken the liberty to write a script for me and so when I was transferred to the video recording room all I had to do was stare and read aloud. The room was just that - four bare dry walled walls. Besides that, a camera on a tripod, a desk with a laptop and a guard with comically oversized boards that held my "confession" were all that existed. Wordlessly, the guard nodded and flicked on the camera. My image appeared on the laptop screed, and I knew that this was a live feed.

"My fellow Americans..." I began to read. At this my words caught in my throat. "I...I..." I couldn't go on. It wasn't just that I had again been assaulted. Hope was trying to sacrifice me for the movement. It was as if I had gone from Mr. Meeker - the hypocrite - to Mrs. Machiavelli the ideological purist. My disgust boiled over. Something inside me told me to bend over and clutch my stomach. The camera guard tapped his foot and cleared his throat. _C'mon Stanley._ While bent over, I clawed at my crusted wounds and made sputtering coughs, throwing as much of the newly freed blood as possible in doing so. Acting out of a halfhearted humanism, the guard leaned the cue cards up against the tripod and walked slowly towards me. I increased my sputtering, slinging my head and shoulders side to side, writing and rewriting infinity on the bare concrete floor. Once the camera guard got within a couple of tentative feet, I thrust my head up, pushing from the tops of my toes to my highest hair follicle. The crown of my head struck him just under the chin. He was completely unawares. Surprisingly, he made a noise like an air bladder being stepped on, less the instant shriek I imagined. He staggered backwards from the blow and in doing so thrust his head into the dry wall. It crumbled until the stud that lay behind it was exposed. The guard's body buckled upon impact and before I could move to catch him, fell to the ground with an eruption that echoed in my own skull; ringing in my eardrums, filling the silence with the universal tone denoting the permanent loss of that frequency to the listener. I reached down and pressed the bottom of my shirt to my face so hard that it caused the edges of my vision to vignette with dark glitter. Standing, I let the blood slowly drip down my face, coagulating as it crossed the trench lines of experience. Staring at the camera's blinking red light, I smiled. "Dearest, I have a confession to make. But first I've got to buy us a little privacy."

Unscrewing the camera from its tripod I carefully placed the still connected camera on the table pointed directly at the door. I placed the mount of the tripod below the handle and extended the legs out as far as they would go to brace against the floor. Smiling, I addressed, well, you.

If you're watching this, there isn't a moment to spare. My barricade won't hold long against Hope. When Homeland Security bags me and I disappear, receding into the national memory banks; absorbed into our collective amnesia, these facts will be struggling lights in the twilight of my life: I was there when the towers of LOST CAUSE were bombed, but I did not try to kill any one...

*****

And there you have the story of my life, thus far. The exception being that day titled by Insurgent as the Awakening. If you've stuck with me, its about to get good. Follow me back one last time as we revisit that time, when I was knocked out in the basement of USCAIN's headquarters for being a "liability", in Hope's words, to democracy. Here now, is the moment I've been longing to tell you, beloved.

****

"Jesus Christ I'm alone again, so what did you do those three days you were dead..."

"Hey! Hey, I'm in here!" Wracking my frame, I twisted back and forth so the chair pounded on the floor.

"Cause this problems gonna last more than the weekend. Do I-e-i-e-i...what?"

"I'm in here, damn it! Give me a hand!"

The jingling of the keys signaled their compliance and it occurred to me to think quickly. How do you explain lying on the floor, bound and screaming while still appearing sane? Blame it on the fraternities.

"What in the Sam Hill?" As the unlikely hero opened the door, keys still lodged in the door handle. "Boy, I don't know what kind of kinky-sexy-play-time you're into, but you need to keep that sorta thing for at home."

I simply smiled, shrugged and said, "Frats. You know how it is." And the custodian just shrugged, rolled their eyes and fogged the room with Lysol TM. Exiting through the haze of clean linen fumes, I had no plan, but knew that I had to get to LOST CAUSE. If for nothing else, to save a single person.

In my bravado, dear final audience, I neglected to remember that I didn't have a car. Or a driver's license. Or even a friend in the world who wasn't out knowingly following through on the half-wit, whole evil plan of a maniacal, charismatic usurper of our once peaceful protest group. I had to find a mode of transportation, and I began scanning the campus that lay newly spread before me. The grass was dewy and the sun was just rising now, meaning I had little time to get there before Insurgent blew them all to whatever deity they believed in. I began walking aimlessly around campus.

Walking down Broadway, I happened across a mint green Geo Prism. The kind of car a sixteen year old broke waitress would drive. But it was perfect for a pizza delivery guy. Now all I had to do was hijack the car or carjack the owner while in it. I casually walked up to the car while whistling Dixie. I looked around the morning's low rays as they filtered through the campus's buildings, fanning downwards. I was utterly alone. And utterly confident I could start the car based solely on my knowledge gained from years of watching and re-watching _Gone in Sixty Seconds_.

Calmly, I rammed my elbow into the window to shatter the glass. I closed my eyes as I expected a shower of glass to spray my face. Instead, a loud thump was all that happened. Wincing, I stepped back and with five quick steps threw my elbow beyond the glass so that my face almost bounced off of the Prism's roof. With the door unlocked it was time to work on the ignition. Unlike Memphis, I'd not come prepared with screwdriver and wire strippers _. Just another time in my life where I'm stuck in the middle of a half-baked plan._ I knew I had to get the ignition open but had no clue how. I tried pounding on it. Kicking it. I even tried prying it off with my bare hands.

"What the hell!" Directing my complaints skywards, I punched the driver side sun visor. This time a shower of broken mirror rained down onto my lap. But so did a spare set of keys. I shook my head and set off to buy some pizza.

Driving down 9A south I had plenty of time to think through my plan. Daytime traffic was at a zombie like ten miles per hour with cars moving so slow they had trouble making it past pot holes. Even so, the LOST CAUSE checkpoint at Liberty Street came far too soon.

"ID CITIZEN!" A DHS guard commanded as I pulled up to the barbed wire, concrete and steel wall.

"I'm delivering pizza to...Vice Chancellor of Infotainment Fitzgerald." I picked the first person in charge I could think of, hoping it would frighten the guard to question his superior.

"And how do I know that?"

I was at a loss. "Here, have a piece to make sure I'm not poisoning him, then call him to tell him I'm here, so he doesn't think I took forever getting here." I squeaked out. At that he looked above the guard shack, at the reconstructed towers, now with the LOST CAUSE seal sandblasted into the otherwise transparent building; an eagle clutching a microphone in one claw and a stone tablet inscribed with the phrase, _"Verum, licentia quod morality."_ The flag glows red, white and blue neon, floating above the rest of the cityscape thanks to the building's active camouflage. Thirty thousand cameras projecting thirty thousand movies of the surrounding city at thirty frames per second. Actually much faster than the eye could hope to perceive. Thanks to those cameras, the building's outline is one lumen brighter than the ambient light, highlighting the building's faux absence.

"Fine. But if the entire building blows up or something, I'll know who to look for." Nonchalantly waved the DHS guard. He dropped both of his hands and hopped back onto the stool inside his guard shack.

_Thank God._ Now I just had to find Hope and Insurgent.

Based on the little of their plans I could gather from the others, they were going to hijack the emergency broadcast system and play a simulated news brief stating that LOST CAUSE was under attack. During the intervening time it would take DHS to scramble to LOST CAUSE, Hope and Insurgent would have other USCAIN members planting bombs throughout the building to be detonated via motion once a LOST CAUSE'er or DHS agent strolled past, unawares. My head spinning, I joined the entry line into LOST CAUSE One, the targeted building.

"Vice Chancellor Fitzgerald! Please sign my boy's hat! It'd mean the world to him! He just loves your programming!"

"Yea! IloveAmateurGatorWrestling! I wish I could be on it but my dadwon't _let_ me!" The boy shouted as he and his father ambled up the stairs; resting on the final landing, hand on knees, heads down.

"Please...just sign...his...hat!" The father wheezed out, just able to raise the hat above his head in offering to the Vice Chancellor.

"Quite. You may have your wish, child." The Vice Chancellor pulled out a permanent marker and flicked the cap off, catching it in his left hand. He signed the LOST CAUSE cap over the crest's stone tablet and finished with a flourish of both hat and maker so that the hat spun onto the boy's head and the marker drew a pencil moustache across the father's upper lip. The boy stared at his father and his father at him, the both of them with glee painted on their faces.

"Also, we are creating a youth division for Amateur Gator Wrestling. You may submit your application to my office."

Again, both father and son stared at each other, this time their eyes enlarged as if viewing directly the face of God.

As the Vice Chancellor approached the front of the line I was praying for a plan to form itself. When he was parallel with me I grabbed his arm with my free hand and swung the pizza around into his face.

"Vice Chancellor! Please let me give you this pizza."

Incredulously, he replied, "What for?"

"My boss sent this here-a-pie as a token there-a of, ya know, ar appreciation for _Pie in Your Eye!_ Sales are up, big, ya know?" _Where the hell did this New Yawka crap come from?_

"Oh, well. In that case, tell your boss we'll run it for another season. Leave the pizza with my assistant."

That, dear audience, is how I unknowingly snuck through one million dollars worth of anti-terrorism gizmos and past three armed guards who were toting automatic riffles taller than I am. By walking. I'm sure after this broadcast there'll be new regulations. You'll probably have to sit on a motorized seat at every public place. That seat will undoubtedly be controlled by even more gizmos now that I've proven even Vice Chancellors are inept at counter-terrorism procedures. At least I've created a new industry for America to out-innovate everyone else at: securitized-motorized-seating.'

*****

At that, I looked at the computer screen and sighed. My head sunk in between my knees, leaving I'm sure, a blood print on the door where my matted hair rested. I was still broadcasting via the cell card. America just saw how tired I am. Behind the concussions, and sarcasm there's nothing more than a tired man who wants to sleep. Who's tired of his nightmares of burning bodies rushing past in LOST CAUSE. Who's tired of his dreamless nights that are more like blackouts. Who's tired of being hunted by his former friends and his homeland's government. I shuddered, inexplicably, and then smiled for the camera one last time. It's time to end this.

*****

Walking the ten flights of stairs to the National Emergency Broadcast Station was more than physically exhausting. Every step past the second story was soul wrenching. It was knowing that if I gave in to what I wanted - to collapse, to suck the cool air nearest the cement steps in short gulps and forget what was happening above; allow my body to be blanketed by the rubble impending and be persuaded by the cement dust to close my eyes a final time - that more than I would be the loss. Worse yet, America wouldn't be free from LOST CAUSE. There'd be another. Most likely in the same spot, just bigger. More walls, barbed wire, hubris, gates, checkpoints, guards, Sentron TM, GetBack TM, and my newly necessary Mosey TM motorized-security-seating. The difference, then, would be any possible lives saved. That spurred me on, galvanized my resolve so that when I was on the tenth floor landing, I would take on anything and anyone. I kicked in the door.

"Hiya!" The door swung open, albeit slower than I'd seen in movies. What lay before me was shocking in its banality. Daylight fluorescent bulbs lit ten low walled cubicles with identical desks and chairs. A water cooler stood next to a copy machine in the far corner. Low pile indeterminate beige/grey carpeting. There was a single person standing up in her cubicle, staring at me with a moustache silhouetted coffee mug. Handlebars.

"That took forever! I ordered that twenty minutes ago, ya know!" She said crossing her arms, nearly spilling her coffee.

"My apologies." I said, looking around at the office, darting here and there.

The office worker had made her way to where I stood while I searched for the National Emergency Broadcast room, or any signs of USCAIN'ers.

"Well? Can't I have my own pizza?" She questioned.

"...Of course." With that she took the pizza from my hand and plopped down at her desk, eyes lowered beneath the pizza box lid. She too was glancing around.

I didn't bother asking for the delivery money. I didn't even bother asking for directions. The pizza absorbed her. I didn't exist to her anymore.

With no sense of direction I began walking down hallways. I may have heard snippets of the plans for today, but I was not privy to any maps. Thankfully, LOST CAUSE continued the time honored tradition of posting office numbers near elevators, so when I made 270 of a 360 degree turn, I saw the placard mounted to the wall: "Infotainment Room 1001, Floor Security and Presidential Safe-Room Room 1002, Gender and Terrorism Statistical Analysis Room 1003, Natural and Manmade Disaster Readiness Response Intervention Team Room 1004, National Emergency Broadcast Station Room 1005". Off I trotted down two hallways to Godonlyknowswhat. Standing in front of the grey metal door labeled 1005, I steeled myself for whatever laid behind.

Turning the silver, flat knob slowly I peered around the burgeoning gap between doorframe and door. The scene on the other side made exact sense for the situation: a physically domineering, yet charming near-stranger who brainwashed a girl I'm physically attracted to and have not told her, and her college protest group into domestic acts of mass destruction. And yet, somehow beloved, I still gasped, unbelieving at the sight.

Hope was crouched on top of a man with a headset on, his hands behind his back as he was attempting to scream through smiley face duct tape. Insurgent was at a control board that looked similar to the USCAIN basement's, fiddling with knobs while pointing a rather large silver pistol at an anchor who sat twitchingly on a stool in a panic. The poor guy was tugging at his white button down collar every other word. Even though I knew he was reading from a teleprompter his speech was filled with pauses and cracks in his voice.

"Ladies and Gentleman, ahem, at this hour, we've a disTURBing report coming right frOM LOST CAUSE. TERRORists have taken..."

"Ahem." Insurgent cleared his throat unnecessarily loudly. The flare with which he brandished the pistol had the same necessity.

"Excuse me." Glared the anchor towards Insurgent. "A group of American loving, God...FEARing red BLOODed Americans has taken over LOST CAUSE and are planning on quote 'Freeing your media so you can think for yourself' end quote. "

Insurgent stood, shaking the pistol rabidly. "I don't care if it is live. You're doing that again! Whatever they pay you, it's too much!"

Seeing Insurgent distracted, I ran through the door, skirted a shocked Hope, and tackled the upper body of Insurgent. He had, however, kept his wits and was ducking as I dove. Our contact was askew. My knee caught Insurgent under the jaw and sent his skull straight back where it bent unnaturally over the edge of the control panel. The gun flew with me and we tumbled to the ground together. The gun and I landed in frame with a thud. As soon as I hit the ground I rocked myself up and swiped the gun. It was my best, unplanned plan to date it was all caught on TV. I can't describe the elation, then horror, dear audience, when I realized it was all caught on TV. _I_ was caught in LOST CAUSE with a gun that _I_ was pointing everywhere thanks to the studio lights and their effect on my eyes. _I_ was the terrorist according to millions of eyes and DHS. Not militant Insurgent, or even Hope, who would now wield violence towards civilians as naturally as a politician a pen.

After a moment of gun waving bedazzlement, I turned to my right, shielding my right eye from the luminous onslaught. I smiled, not knowing from where, and began an impromptu speech. I think you'll recognize this as our introduction to one another.

"America, you don't need this! America, LOST CAUSE is lying to you! You've taken my freedom, America and I can never get that back." At this I was waving my tattoo at the presumed camera's eye, shouting at tone that rose in both pitch and volume. "When will we have democracy again, America? I've seen the best of our generation, now mad, driven mad by a government's velvety silence. There must be some other way to settle this argument. America it's not those sand niggers. What a terrible ethnic slur, we've created America. Then again, we always were good at outdoing ourselves...we are USCAIN - US Citizens Against Iraq Now and our leader's goal..."

During my exuberant and admittedly somewhat confused soapbox rhetoric I saw the outline of a human crawling towards the control panel.

"Oh, God!" Shrieked Hope from ground level as if the room itself wailed.

She startled me from my disjointed sermon - I was getting to a point, I promise. I pulled the trigger in no direction specifically. BOOM! The sound filled the space immediately after Hope's shriek and then vanished taking my confidence with it. I stood with my head shaking, unsure of myself again. The studio lights went black.

Startled a second time, I was blind again. This time from darkness. I immediately dropped to the ground and placed my hands over my head, awaiting the tangible loss of self that DHS carried around their belts. A dim red glow coming from the room's door told me that we only had emergency power. My broadcast soapbox stage's curtains closed. I had been given the hook.

"...want to stop him and save the innocent lives he wishes to destroy." I muttered to the ground. Standing after a tension packed moment without DHS's intrusion, I left the gun on the floor and walked towards the door in a daze: thinking. Where would it make the most sense to set up the bombs?

*****

Dearest viewer, it was at this time that I had to, it occurs to me now, think like a terrorist. Maximum causalities, maximum psychological impact and destruction. Not my normal logical sequence, I admit. Chatting with you, past precedent comes to mind. 1993. Our good - recently deceased - friend with the unpronounceable name. His organization had supported a huge attack on the city, starting with WTC One, hoping to bomb tunnels and other landmarks simultaneously. They were able to park a van filled with explosives on the basement level and detonate it while leaving. Too bad I wasn't a student of history.

*****

In a panic, I decided that if I couldn't find any bombs on this floor, I would go up or down one floor, assuming - more like a mathematician with an eye for beautiful symmetry - an every-other-floor distribution. Crouched on the floor in the darkness, I opened desk drawers, unlocked filing cabinets, flipped desk chairs, tapped walls and floors for hollow cavities, listened for abnormal humming and peered through darkness for out-of-place glowing red lights. At this point, I didn't care if I got caught; just that I did something to help.

Either I didn't find it, or there was nothing on the tenth floor. I decided to move down one floor, thinking at the very least I was one floor closer to leaving by going down. I was making my way by crawling on all fours grabbing at desk legs and wall supports to navigate through touch. When my hands felt the cool slick of marble elevator column, I craned my neck up to see the burnt orange "Exit" sign above the stairwell door. I stood when I reached the steel door and as I twisted the knob I heard Hope's voice stabbing at me.

"Stanley, just what the fuck do you plan on doing? There's nothing you can do. He's already there, checking connections. Then its time to kiss your tail goodbye! We've won - it's over."

I shook my head at her out of frustration. "We? What do you _mean_ \- we? He's won, Hope. Can't you see that? Do you remember how this whole mess got started -"

"Remember? Stanley this whole mess is because THEY started a war! I'm not the one who attacked them; they interrogated us. Tattooed us. Hell they even know what my armpit smells like for God sakes. And you talk to me of how it started? You weren't there when, when they threatened to rape me, Stanley. To steal yet one more thing from me. _We_ allowed them to take our identities and our privacy but there is no way I was giving them my body. It was the last bit of control I had, and I will resent them for life for even considering it. All this for the names of people in a college group. For what? Because we were protesting? A right our founders would have clapped us on the back for has suddenly meant indefinite imprisonment or unspeakable torture.

"And really, Stan, if you really thought about it, really admitted how you felt, wouldn't you want to destroy them? You can't tell me you haven't dreamt of how good it would feel to watch all the shit - the checkpoints, Sentrons TM, this place - all just blow the hell up?"

Even though I wanted to, I couldn't agree with Hope. In my darker days I had visions of the buildings toppling under a fiery rebellion. A populace so revolted that they banded together and ended the tyranny and mental imprisonment. Instead, I offered the simple idea, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, Hope."

She sniggered at my sophomoric philosophical cliché and replied, "In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king."

"Right." I sighed. We could throw washed up aphorisms like baseballs at a little league game. "I'll quote you familiar wisdom all day. Or I'll go and actually do something with my remaining time on this earth. " I spun around and grasped the door handle, but before I opened it, I took a shot. "Hope, if I don't have a chance, if you've really won, where are the bombs?"

She laughed, "If you knew your history, you wouldn't have to ask."

*****

Naturally dear viewer, not knowing 1993 - digital-age ancient history, really - I took the elevator up to the 81st floor, roughly were both planes had hit their marks and begun a mad dash looking for anything that would've seemed bomb like. When that failed, I jumped up a floor and repeated the process. No such luck there either.

I hung my head and slouched in an office chair, spinning slowly around. My only option was down at this point. I'd seen no signs of anything suspicious. Besides, in normal circumstances every floor had a security presence. Cutting the power to the building thankfully meant that Sentron TM , GetBack TM and the slew of anti-terrorist measures were disabled, so I had no trouble moving around. Insurgent, however, would have been trying to bring in bombs prior to the lockdown. There was only once place that didn't require that many security checks - the basement.

I returned to the elevator and punched the correct button, again trying to predict what would happen, daydreaming on my way down.

The door would open and I would be tucked against the wall, fearing gunfire. When none comes, I would crouch behind the low fencing of the stairs and survey the scene. Insurgent would be there, cackling while he checks his wires, flips switches as Hope stares, well, hopefully. A USCAIN'er would enter declaring, "All clear commander Insurgent."

"Very well, with this switch I flip off LOST CAUSE!" Insurgent would quip, using his middle finger against the silver toggle switch.

I would burst onto the scene, shouting, "Stop right there Insurgent! I won't let you hurt any more innocents!"

During the ensuing scramble, replete with exploding, floating "BLAM!" and "POW!" callouts, Hope would be helpless against my charm and heroism.

"Oh, Stanley! I have no clue what I was thinking! Please forgive me, and take me immediately after this skirmish."

_Ding!_ The elevator shaft opened wide into reality, exposing me entirely to the basement. _Not quite how I wanted to make my real entrance._ I dropped to the ground, expecting a hailstorm of lead to explode in the elevator. Instead, silence. I crawled out of the elevator on my elbows to take stock of the situation. Nothing but concrete pillars and empty space. I sighed and brushed myself off as I stood, using the handrail to steady myself.

I found myself walking around in complete despair. I hadn't stopped anything and didn't even think I would, wandering through the concrete cave that opened in front of me. In fact, when I heard loud popping coming from above, I thought I had completely missed my chance. Out of cowardice I ran forward towards the building's four central pillars and sat with my back against the driver side wheel of a white van parked alongside two of the pillars.

"What a waste. How pathetic!" I shouted bouncing my head off of the tired harder than I had intended.

At that the van door clicked and slid with it Insurgent himself stepping out as I scrambled on the ground to wedge myself in between the passenger side and the pillar. It was here that I realized I still had a chance. If he was here, it wasn't too late.

When Insurgent had rounded the support pillar I crouched-waddled towards the door and gingerly grasped the door handle until I heard it click as it opened. With one hand on the handle and the other on the door's paneling I slid the door open. Inside wasn't the tumbleweed of wires as I had expected, but five shipping drums of plastic with a single wire running to each of them, and the terminus connected to a smartphone. On the screen a timer was counting down from five minutes.

"Really?" I chuckled to myself. "All that planning, and all I've to do is press stop." So I did. I exited the van, triumphant. Head held high, my chest puffed out like a proud badger carrying a snake, just killed. My steps were crisp - heel, toe, heel, toe - and my elbows bent at exact forty-five degree angles, swinging metronomically. That is, until I rounded the corner and a fist brutalized my nose.

Blood streaming freely from my face, I dropped to the ground immediately. Lying on my stomach I just managed to glimpse black Italian loafers parading through my already pooling blood; the ghost-like reflection of perfectly pleated trousers rising from them like twinned towers.

"Impressive, Stan. I didn't think you'd even manage to get down here in time, let alone have the bravado to open that van door. Or was it stupidity?" There was no sense of contempt or emotion of any kind in Insurgent's voice. I realized he was genuinely asking me a question when he paused and declined slightly towards my body. Without real sight I felt his body lean downward and that was it. The gap between two humans charged with the polarity of their purposes. "Why don't I help you up, so you can see the fireworks better?"

I felt an arm under my shoulder, then with ease Insurgent picked me up and slung me into the now opened van door. I hit my back on one of the fifty-five gallon containers but quickly opened my eyes towards my attacker. He held out a matching smartphone for my inspection.

"Stan, all I've to do is reactivate the sequence from here. Once I do that, there's no stopping it. We win."

"How's your head feel?" I wheezed.

"Wha-"

Before Insurgent finished that syllable, I had charged him with whatever I had left. He slid a few inches at first, with my blood on his shoe leaving a vector skid on the van floor, until his head collided with the curve of the van's ceiling. His body went limp then, and his skull dragged down the outline of the van's interior until it bounced off at the juncture of glass and trim. The bloody skid on the metal floor was mimicked on the window.

Before I could celebrate a second time, Insurgent's smartphone blinked on the ground, indicating three minutes remaining.

Admittedly, dear loyal audience, my only thought here was to run. Not my proudest moment, I know. So thanks to Darwinism, I had two options - and there wasn't anything to fight.

One hand to my face to stem the flow of blood from my nose, I wheeled myself around to the elevator. However, pressing the button nothing had happened. Juvenilely, I pressed the button five or six more times before booting the door, throwing my hands up.

"MOTHER FUCKER!"

"Please be patient while security officers are protecting you. Once they've cleared the area of all possible Anti-American terrorist threats, you may use the elevator again." The reassuring recording of the elevator only served to give ironic voice to a panic that sank from my highest hair follicle and sat reverberating in the cuticle of my pinky toe. "Please be patient while security officers are-"

Again, there was only flight. I wheeled around and over to the other side of the central pillars, pleading with God for an exit. Either he listened, or I'm damned lucky, because there was a human sized door next to a key padded garage door. As I reached the steps up to the cement landing, I heard a ding to my left. DHS agents poured out of the elevator on this side of the basement. Ramming my shoulder into the door's push bar, I could hear the opening of gunfire pelting through the garage door and continuing off to my right.

*****

Final Moments

The images from LOST CAUSE that evening were eerily reminiscent: destruction dust caked on by blood to hundreds of people's faces; glass littering the ground for a city block, so that every reporter's fast steps sounded like walking on loose pebbles. Both prayers and questions to God drawn on car hoods, the letter's sparkling interiors' s garishly dichotomized in the evening reports when camera's harsh halogen fluorescent rays bounced upon them, sending their messages skyward to their intended recipient.

This time, it only took hours to have a face to blame. Resolution was promised in days or less. If you remember the pundits, all of those great counter-terrorism measures installed everywhere were praised as "providing closure" upon my arrest. My mug shot, taken when we were tattooed, hit the airwaves from LOST CAUSE's Secondary Tactical Alert Reserve in tower two. While my brief attempt at televangelism wasn't re-aired, stills were taken from it where I was interpreted to be proudly waving the gun I had just acquired from Insurgent. And my prints were all over the four floors of the building. And the Vice Chancellor of Infotainment remembered me, giving a rousing testimonial of my lascivious and immoral nature in line. And the guard at the gate swore I had threatened his family all the way down to his grandmother's pet goldfish if I didn't get in. Turns out, I wasn't as good at camouflage and deception as I had hoped. That, and I am apparently a pretty evil guy.

*****

That, remaining audience, is how we got where we are today. I do not abdicate all guilt. I place it squarely on the heads of 538 representatives, one hundred senators, one president and three hundred million American citizens. I could have done better. We could have done better to avoid all of this in the first place. I fell in love with the idea of activism for activism's sake \- well that and a hot girl. We need activism for the sake of acting on those "big" ideals America used to be known for, not creating another product in the counter-terrorism market. Freedom for all. Equality for all. True justice despite public opinion, skin color, bank account or political ideology. Blindly or not, I have faith that America's best nature will come out, just as it always does after a tragedy. Don't go out and shop. Do go out and wave the flag in the streets. Mourn the loss of the dead by walking candle light vigils. Walk to your governor's house, mayor's office, White House, hell even the still shattered remains of LOST CAUSE, and demand better. Demand of your government what we expect of each other: honesty, true transparency, ethical behavior for the common good and a desire to work for something bigger than one's self. If LOST CAUSE is simply rebuilt, the true terrorists have won, and those innocent lives were tossed aside in vain. Bumper stickers won't do it this time, America. More telethons and reactionary "tear'st" hating rhetoric won't do it either. Neither will apathetic hope.

Dearest audience, it's time to put my theories to a test. Fellow citizens of this glass house America, how many stones shall you cast when I walk out this door?
About the Author

Born in Buffalo New York and educated at SUNY Geneseo in English literature and education, Adam Maciejewski is new to the self-publishing field even though he's been writing for years. Most interested in social commentary, political drama and modern narrative styles, his writing reflects the experiences of the millennial American and their struggles to find meaning in the world.

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