Chapter 15
Thomas
Following Jeremiah’s talk, there’s a training session on recruiting. We learn some techniques to determine which of our fellow classmates might be ready to take the next step towards freedom. The five-step process ends with us passing the name of the person on to the organizers via dead drop, where they perform some additional vetting. If the candidate passes the vetting process, their name is put on a list to receive an invitation to a reveal party.
It’s all very informative and interesting. There’s a short break before the next presentation, and I take the opportunity to talk to Veritas—something we haven’t had much chance to do since we arrived.
“So, what do you think so far?”
“I think it’s great,” she says as she hugs my arm and leans her head onto my shoulder. “What about you?”
“Yeah. I’m definitely glad we’re here. I mean, what Jeremiah said makes a lot of sense. I guess I never really thought about how we’d prevent things from going the wrong way after we get our freedoms back. I knew we didn’t want to go back to the way things were before, but. . . . I’m just glad he’s here. Having someone give input who actually lived through that time is amazing.”
She hugs my arm again, pressing close against me, which makes me glad they haven’t heated the room up too much. The temperature is definitely on the cool side. I guess they didn’t want to attract too much attention from the neighboring area by firing up the heating system.
A few minutes later, as we’re about to start the next session, there’s a commotion outside in the hallway. Soon afterwards, a member of the security team comes in and whispers something to Pam. They walk over to where Jeremiah is seated, and the three of them form a huddle.
“What do you think went on out there?” I ask no one in particular.
“I hope it’s not the Identity Police,” someone says.
There’s a general murmuring in the audience that continues to grow the longer the huddle remains in the front of the room. Finally, the security team member leaves quickly, and Jeremiah makes his way up to the stage. He picks up the microphone that’s lying on top of a stool and addresses us all.
“Can I have everyone’s attention, please? I suppose everyone has noticed the conference we’ve been having up here for the past few minutes. First—there’s no danger to any of us. The security team has apprehended someone who was here on false pretenses but was actually a spy for the Identity Police.”
The murmurs grow louder, and Jeremiah holds up a hand in a calming gesture.
“Now, everyone remain calm. We have the situation under control. I’ve been informed that this person was trying to set up a homing beacon to transmit our location.”
“Should we leave now?” someone shouts out as the murmuring returns with gusto. Jeremiah reiterates his calming gesture and continues to speak.
“However . . . however, we have a jamming device in operation and were able to block the signal.”
The noise from the audience subsides for the most part with this pronouncement.
“The infiltrator apparently discovered this fact and was trying to open the bathroom window and throw the homing beacon outside in hopes it would be out of range of the jamming device, and that’s when they were discovered and apprehended.”
“What are you going to do with them?” someone shouts out.
“Shoot the traitor!” someone else yells.
“There will be no one shot or harmed today,” comes a stern reproach from Jeremiah. “We have detained the person, and the council will decide what will happen to them. Remember, ours is a non-violent movement. We cannot allow our fear to give way to violence. If we do, those who oppose us will use that as an opportunity to brand us as terrorists, and our message of freedom will be lost, and many people will die as a result. We cannot go that way.
“Do you think this is the first time someone has tried to infiltrate our movement?” he continues. “It isn’t, I can assure you. And yet we are still here. We’re going to proceed as normal with the conference now, so, please, take your seats.”
His words seem to calm the crowd. I’m concerned about the fallout if this person gets set free just like everyone else is, but I’m not ready to kill anyone over it. Tension seems to slowly leave the room as the presenter for the next session is invited to the stage and begins to speak. But I’m overwhelmed with a desire to try and get a glimpse of this troublemaker, this enemy agent sent to spy on us and turn us all in.
Leaving my seat, I head over to the door nearest to where the commotion took place, telling the guide standing there that I need to go to the restroom. She politely directs me to exit by a door on the far side of the room. Following her instructions, I head in the opposite direction from where I really want to go, moving away from where they’re holding the traitor in our midst. Once I reach the indicated exit, another guide directs me down the hall to the left, giving me verbal instructions about how to get to a bathroom. I follow their instructions, frustrated that I won't be able to accomplish my self-appointed mission.
After arriving at the small, unisex bathroom, I take the opportunity to relieve myself. As I'm washing my hands, I become aware of a small window with an opaque glass pane, six feet up, on the wall to my right. Quickly drying my hands, I use the handicapped support bar on the wall as a step, putting my foot on it and pushing myself up, bracing against the wall with my left hand so that I'm eye-level with the window. With my free hand, I manage to work the window latch. I pull on the latch, which doubles as the handle, and it makes a squeaking sound, the hinge rusty from years of humidity and un-use. It begrudgingly opens—barely an inch, but it's enough for me to peer outside.
As I glance around, not really expecting to see much of anything, I see a group of people walking towards a car. Two big guys are on either side of a scrawny kid. The kid looks like he has his hands tied behind him. One of the escorts puts his hand on the kid's head as they maneuver him into the back seat of the car. As the kid sits down, he turns his head briefly in my direction. I stare at him for all of two seconds before the door shuts and the car drives away, but his face is etched into my mind. It's the face of an enemy of our freedom. A face just like one of us. A face I'll never forget.
I head back to the meeting, my mind filled with questions and my emotions going haywire. Why would he want to do what he did? What would motivate him to do such a thing? He may not support what we’re doing, but he was actively trying to expose us—to turn us in. Why?
Back in the lecture hall, I take my seat beside Veritas, and by lunchtime, the whole episode is fodder for our conversation. I keep my mouth shut about my clandestine snooping activities. Most people appear willing to trust the leadership to decide what to do about the spy, and we all speculate about what their fate will be.
There’s one more session after lunch and then the final presentation—the one we’ve all been looking forward to. It’s now that Jeremiah will unveil the council’s plan for how to protect our freedoms while, at the same time, avoiding the mistakes that were made prior to 2047. I can feel the anticipation in the room.
“I’m so excited!” Veritas says as she taps out a rhythm on my leg with her hands, rapidly tapping with her hands several times like my leg is a conga drum. I laugh at her display. Finally, Jeremiah takes the stage and begins.
“I hope everyone has learned a lot today. We’ve certainly had some excitement, haven’t we? Well, I trust that what I’m about to talk about will not disappoint. During the Q&A session this morning, a young lady asked about the path forward. She posed the question, once we achieve the freedoms we seek, how do we prevent a return to the chaos of the time prior to the Equality Law of 2047? That is the question I will seek to answer now.
“Without giving an entire lecture on the history of human rights, it’s necessary to remind ourselves of where the concept of human rights in our nation has come from. The majority of the founders of our nation believed that human rights were not something thought up solely by man but were ultimately derived from God, and that was considered to be the Christian God of the Bible. There was a common understanding of right and wrong presented in the Bible, and our laws and the rights those laws sought to protect were based on that worldview.
“Now, whether you agree with the moral views of the Bible or not, one of the benefits of a moral system based upon religion is that most religions tend to clearly define what is right or wrong, they tend to write those beliefs down, and after some period of time, those beliefs become settled. They don’t tend to suddenly come up with new morals or define new rights for the human race. The morals remain relatively fixed.
“In the decades leading up to the Equality Law of 2047, the idea that our nation should be governed by morals defined solely by the Bible and the Judeo-Christian God had slowly been replaced in the public sphere. By 2047, no longer did human rights need to be defined or limited to what a particular religion taught or believed. It came to be believed that humankind, not God, should decide what our rights were. New ideas of what was right and what was wrong came to be considered equally important—or even more important—than what a religion might teach.
“The moral foundations of our nation had changed to include competing sets of beliefs about what was right or wrong. Without a common moral belief system, what we have developed instead is a system where what is right or wrong is defined by popular vote, which can change from one election cycle to the next. So we now have created a system where various groups are competing with one another to ensure that their moral beliefs—a.k.a. their ‘rights’—are codified into law. Naturally, this can sometimes come at the expense of the opposing beliefs of one’s neighbors. Thus, creating an ‘us versus them’ mentality that fuels animosity and strife.
“With this paradigm, there is no end to what new rights may be granted and which of our former rights may be taken away at any time. Tomorrow a group of citizens who like pickles and consider it their right to have pickle-friendly dishes served at every restaurant may push for a law to be passed to protect this new ‘right.’ In today’s moral climate, the law requiring pickle-friendly food would have the same moral force as arguing that it is the right of a disabled citizen to have access to that same restaurant. With the dissolution of a common moral framework, who or what becomes the arbiter of what is right or wrong? Today, something is not wrong or right in and of itself until the government, via popular vote, makes it so.
“This viewpoint is what led to the chaos of the period prior to 2047. At that time, there was an increasing number of new identity groups forming, with new rights being claimed by both new and existing groups, which prompted law after law after law that ultimately led us to economic and social ruin. With an ever-increasing body of human rights and an endless stream of laws designed to protect those rights, the citizens of this country lost more and more of their freedom, being forced with each new law to perform some new act of homage or service in respect of some newly recognized right or privilege. Resentment began to grow, unrest began to grow, and social and economic chaos became the norm.”
Jeremiah stopped to take a drink of water from the bottle that had been placed on the podium. You could hear a pin drop as we waited for what he would say next.
“Step number one in preventing a return to those days is a recognition that we must somehow limit the number of rights that the government will protect and let the people decide as individuals and businesses and organizations which other rights or perceived rights they will support, without the government either helping or hindering them.
“The obvious next question then becomes which rights would those be?
“After much consideration and debate, it is the recommendation of the council that we craft a new amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would assist in this effort to limit the number of rights the government will protect. With this amendment in place, many of the laws we have that protect rights that have been defined since the early 2000s would be considered unconstitutional and would therefore cease to be law. This, we believe, would pave the way for us, as a society, to begin to find a new way to live with each other. A new path forward that doesn’t rely upon using the force of law to coerce people we don’t agree with to do everything we want them to do, while at the same time judiciously using the force of law to protect the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, regardless of their beliefs.
“We recognize that these amendments will, necessarily, prevent some laws that many people may support from either being passed into law in the first place and/or cause some existing laws that benefit certain groups to be reversed. However, we believe it is only by limiting the number of specific rights that the government will protect that we can prevent a return to the rampant violence and societal chaos that existed prior to the Equality Law of 2047.”
There are murmurs and rumblings around the room as people begin talking in whispers among themselves. The electricity in the room is palpable. Jeremiah nods at Pam, and the Q&A portion of the meeting begins. Several hands go up around the room as she makes her way over to one of them and extends the microphone.
“A lot of the laws you’re talking about doing away with are laws that specifically protect LGBTQ rights,” the unknown audience member begins. “Wouldn’t that basically be setting the stage for widespread persecution of the LGBTQ community?”
Murmurs of support can be heard around the room.
“Let’s take one of those laws, for example, say, the non-gendered restroom law of 2032,” Jeremiah replies. “At that time, public restrooms were still predominantly labeled as either ‘Men’ or ‘Women,’ and many people expected that biological males would use the restroom labeled ‘Men’ and biological females would use the facilities labeled ‘Women.’ The Trans-gender community felt this was a violation of their rights and succeeded in lobbying for a law stipulating that anyone could use any public restroom they chose, regardless of their birth gender.
“Now, there were a large number of people who didn’t support that position. So, what was done was that the belief of the people who felt that any person should be able to use any restroom facility regardless of their birth gender was determined by law to be more important than the belief of the people who felt that everyone should only use the restroom facility assigned to their birth-gender. As I mentioned before, one groups ‘right’ was selected to over-rule another groups ‘right.’”
“So the solution is to go back to discrimination against LGBTQ people?” someone shouted from the crowd.
“Some groups,” Jeremiah continued, “have claimed—and rightly so—that the current law is discrimination against non-LGBTQ people who believe everyone should use the facility assigned to their birth gender. Laws discriminate by nature between what is punished or supported and what isn’t. As I mentioned before, the never-ending procession of laws that create an ever-increasing list of winners and losers in the ‘whose rights over-rule whose’ game is a losing battle. By choosing to limit the number of rights the government will protect, there will be give and take. There will be, for instance, some public places where a business will ask that people only use the restroom assigned to their birth gender. There will be others where business owners will choose to have gender-neutral facilities. And the people will have the power to choose which businesses they support and which they don’t. It’s called learning to live in the real world with people who don’t always agree with you and refraining from trying to coerce them through the force of law to conform to your own beliefs.
“I would also point out, as you are aware, that restroom design has largely eliminated this contention. Newer facilities, like the one we are in right now, have open restroom designs where there are individual rooms with a single toilet that open into a common hand-washing area. With a little ingenuity, we can learn to live together without having to pass a law to force each other to behave the way we would like. It’s about learning to respect one another’s differing beliefs and, in many cases, allowing for both to co-exist.”
The rest of the meeting is quite lively, to say the least. Excitement and concern are expressed as people question which laws may be considered unconstitutional when all is said and done and what the plan is for getting enough support for a constitutional convention. Jeremiah explains that the wording of the amendment is still being discussed, but they believe it will be finalized in the next couple of months and that plans are still being formulated as to how to proceed after that point.
The conference ends, and we all help clean up a bit before we’re instructed to proceed to our various departure points, where we board the trucks that will take us back to campus. I want to talk with Veritas about everything that’s happened, but not in front of all the other people we’re seated with in the back of this truck. There’s a lot of discussion on the way back, but I mostly listen and wonder what this new direction will mean for the freedom movement.
* * * * *
Three days later, Veritas and I meet at the schoolhouse for our last rendezvous before the school break. We spend longer than usual holding hands, kissing, and talking about everything that’s happened this term. Neither one of us wants to leave.
“I don’t think I can stand not talking with you or even texting you during the break,” I say.
“I know, but we can still send each other letters like we planned.”
We can’t communicate with each other directly because of our mutual involvement in the freedom movement. Googlomerate or the other government censors might analyze the data and somehow connect us to the reveal parties. They make recordings of any voice communications, scan emails, texts, videos, et cetera, then analyze when and where people are when they communicate and basically create a fairly accurate picture of what people are up to.
I remember a story from last year when these two people kidnapped a kid and held them for ransom. The kidnappers were pretty smart and hardly ever communicated, but with just a few phone calls to each other and a single text message, they got caught. Those communications had flagged them for analysis in the case, and the government analysts were able to determine they were the kidnappers by analyzing all of the old location and communication data from prior months when they were planning the abduction.
So, there’s no way we can communicate like normal. But we came up with a plan. Veritas will send a snail-mail letter to my friend, Jeremy, from back home. I’ll get the letter from Jeremy. In turn, I’ll send mail for Veritas to a friend of hers. We won’t be able to see or talk to each other during the break, but at least we’ll be able to send each other letters.
“It’s only two weeks,” she says as she leans her head on my shoulder while we sit on the back steps of the schoolhouse.
“Yeah, but still.”
“I know. I’ll miss you, too.”
An alarm goes off on my armband, and it startles me.
“Curfew’s in twenty minutes. We gotta go,” I say.
We hug one last time in front of the shed before we put on our helmets and head back to our separate dorms.
