The Calm Days

                                                                           

                                                             The Calm Days

                                                                       

                                                                                  By John Rogan

            I could see the solid sheet of clouds start moving with the breeze. Olympia in the dawn was cold and misty. Movement had to be had before Tech cops saw. This slant-eyed, yak-faced guy from the Big Bank Country kept squawking. I usually don’t associate with Charlie, gang-up and go after Sinos when I can, but we were jonesing bad. His body all stick-like, question after question, that’s why they get got at. He was new, just off an ocean liner. He had a little bit of money so I showed him around hoping he’d break me apiece when we got it.

            Mac cops saw us. The metal car like the Bat-mobile I used to remember when there was still t.v. Big halo lights driving down on us. I hid the slant -eyed man, his face all wonder. The two Mac cops got out with their flashlights, best flashlights around, and went through the vacated property. One guy yelled when a bunch of rats and moles came running out of the building across from where we were. Sino starts laughing. Before I can bug my eyes out to hit him the halo lights are in our eyes and using Sino like a shield, so the cameras don’t get my face, and battering screaming slanty-eyed up against the two big Iraq-Syrian war veterans. One of the Mac cops grabs my shoulder and his big, bulging bald head surging with AgAnt 015 hormone goes cracking right into Charlie. Something on Sino’s face cracks and he starts squeaking in Big Bank Country talk, ying-wow-wow or something, but the Mac cops beady little AgAnt 015 night adjusted vision follows me over Charlie, whose down, and I’ve forgot about him. Right then the other Mac cop grabs me by the neck squeezes until tightness goes to not breathing and I mouth “OK”.

            The Mac plants are nicer. At Apple they realize a dead worker is no good. Even on a smash and run I remember only darts and fellas falling over sleeping. So I say “yup,yup” and put the pills down my throat all happy like they’re candy. They have a kid with me. When I was his age I was watching Batman cartoons and waiting for Mom and Dad to come home from their jobs. Back in the Calm Days. The kid was screaming and twisting and they had Two Pfizer guys shoving the little yellow and blue pills into his mouth and the kid coughing the yellow and blue chalk back all spitty. It was lucky I was jonesing so bad one of the Pfizer guys I knew from either the Samsung or Intel plant had a broad smile when he saw me shaking like San Francisco did during the artificial rapture when Graham-ites pulsed through the seismic plates with little bangs of Uranium four years back.

            So I took me a Percocet, nice fast soft edge, along with a Dilauid, for that soft long jam; They had Oxycontin not Oxypotane so I took the OC remembering calm floating down over from my youth. Followed with my favorite mood stabilizer Zyprexa, a Ritalian extended release, to keep me awake and focused and a new Thorazine and Valium combo pill I had not seen before. My eyes heavy, dumb smile coming across. The Pfizer guy nudged me out after I don’t know how long, I guess only a couple seconds. The Ritalin was not doing enough to keep me awake, so I took the Aderall and Seroquel combo pill and he took my blood  then nodded to the Pfizer guy at the door and they took me. An Apple guy with sweatpants and a lab coat warmly welcomed me to the company. I slapped his hand around and then drooled on him even though I was acting more messed up then I was. It was really just spit I let slip out of the back of my tongue. I was trying to look as cotton-mouthed, white-lipped, and by-bye druggo as possible.

            It didn’t come off when I threw up blood at lunch and they too k me to Quality-Control and there they got me on Morphine, Librum and it feels like Concerta, but I’ve never seen it in big liquid vials like that. It would have come off, but I couldn’t hold my pills down. They told us how lucky we were over and over. A big map of Cascadia hung in Quality-Control. Cascadia broke off from the U.S. when I was in high school, about Northern California up to Alaska all wanted out after the Russians were in Alaska and Texas and the Syrians and Iranians  bursting out of Florida. I remember my Dad crying in front of the television. An old U.S. flag waved on the screen and people sang an old song together, before the signal went out. They came and grabbed all the t.v. s made them into cell-phones for rich, snotty, fashionable teens flying through warm Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan nights. The son and daughters of our occupation spent their families disposable incomes on flashy cell phone cameras, fashion accessories shown off through Social Media posts in exclusive, late-night opium Dens, and unrealistic Musical Movies with sexy, dark-skinned actresses and shirtless, brawny Arab men. The youth of our enemies grew fat on Cheddar Naan bread, ate Opium brownies, and played immersive and complicated three-dimensional video games with holographic cameos from their favorite celebrity in New Persia. I saw a way-life-is show on Istanbul on a Blackberry that had service close to a decade ago. It was all these beautiful dark girls driving Colonized-Area quality Teslas and sleeping all day and going out all night to Opium-infused drinks at shiny clubs and screaming into magnificent cellphones at their never-present boyfriend. A Persian pop song would kick on and the girl would cry on the couch amongst a pile of clothes, and I guess we as viewers were supposed to feel bad for her. But all I could think about were the people who barley ate, were drugged into working 20 hours a day .Defeated Americans, not even one white person on the show. The Turkish boyfriend ended up fighting with the other Armenian and Saudi roommates over the girl in a Penthouse in Downton Istanbul in fine designer suits and cute brand name designer dresses they had put together and shipped out of what was then Arkansas. I watched the show must be ten years ago now, but it ended with them throwing plates, food and cake at each other which at the time made me hungry, disgusted and very mad.

            Cascadia  wa’ not taking this stuff. Guys like my Dad went off to the plants real easy and  got labored-out then eliminated in under a month. I worked over in Portland what was then Oregon. Cascadia held out against The Allies, but once China came in with Russia and Iran it was all over. I am not saying we became part of the CA. Liz Cheney that old white war-bird wooped the Allies good over Butte back in 2027. We might as well become part of The Colonized – Area. We had farms and places so people could eat, and plan. The Sinos radiated the soil and the good pills started doing more destruction than the sanctions, the raids, and the crop burnings. But nostalgic Americans still hoped the U.S. would rise again, each year it seemed less possible, each year we had to steal more from the companies to survive. But Cascadia still cool. We just got nothing. If you want a place to go and do nothing, that is not be told to do this way or that that way, and definitely not labor. I been working out of Olympia knocking over Syria-Iraq hormone veterans as they try to creep in through Montana. I go deep into the CA. I hit an IBM truck once in what was Denver.

            I walked out of Quality-Control higher than before lunch and they thought I was Pablo from Mexico. Just so you know I am Theodore Tecumseh. I am from a lot of places. My real name is Theodore Tsechitz, but when I set out from home after the Plants labored-out my Old Dad and Arthritic Mom, with anybody ethnic getting killed, so I went with a truly native-America name, just so American National Guard irregulars did not get confused and hang me. My old parents screaming about their joint pains while hormone veterans shoved us in vans to go to the IBM Plant. I go after IBM trucks and staff in particular, cruel motherfuckers. My paretns were so caught off guard. A look of outrage and fear hung on their faces as they got thinner, sicker, malnourished, and I never saw them again. My parents probably burned for Energy like most other Colonized-Area citizens after they labored-out. I guess I was outside Chicago, but all I remember is fire and walking to where there was no smoke.

            So now I’m lots of names from lots of places but Cascadia know me as Tecumseh. I don’t let the Allies go for what happened. They call it Globalization, American- capitalism, but people are getting killed for laptops and designer jeans. There is a demand.  Persian markets flush with war-time oppurtunities experienced a population boom around the beginning of the 20’s. They had access to foreign super-cheap, therefore super profitable CA manufacturing markets through Alliances with the Russians and the Chinese.

Tia Atari, a bosomy, curvy, leather clad Pop star from Mongolia stared back at me from a poster on the wall as I walked out of Quality Control. Her single “I Gotta Go Buy-Bye” played on a constant loop and a digital download was available for sale at every door. I was back at my coding station. My eyes felt like salt rocks and I could smell my teeth rotting but I was so high and so happy. I just copied down 0a1110101a010d110f001e110100h etc.  until it was on some part of the hard drive or something. I hadn’t seen a computer since I was a kid. I loved playing video games, computer games. Now seeing a smart phone with a signal in the CA or Cascadia is a miracle. I had a Nokia I played an awesome snake game on, but Syria-Iraq Hormone Veterans lifted that off me last time I got taken to a plant.

This is when I always did it. I blew it during lunch. I have been lucky. Shuffling out to the night quarters, going past Tia Atari’s incredible brown, shady cleavage and resisting the urge to start saving for a cellphone that I could eventually see images of her on in my own private time. Maybe I would not get labored-out. Maybe thye’d keep me at code so when my eyes wore out I’d still be able to move, hear, and taste.  I could listen to Tia sing “Go Buy-Bye, Buy-Bye, Buy-Bye” and maybe they would promote me to something like a Tech cop or Narcotic Administrator, something I could stay alive at. I knew they gave one this illusion, but buy into it and they got you. You’d be lucky to make it a month after you had saved up enough to buy a clunky Nokia they used 50 years ago. Emaciated, empty eyed men typed in the digital code for the Tia Atari album. The Pfizer guy I knew from intake saw me again after the Tia Atari kiosk, maybe he did not recognize me not pilled out and un-fed and on the clock at intake, but now he said out loud “Tecumseh?”

I went down the line and shattered the kness of three guys who looked labored-out. The Pfizer guys and Tech cops are confused and freaking out about so many destroyed laborers, as they try to figure out what’s going on I have around 2 seconds to freely move and get as good of a jump start as I can. I hit the fence with electric tazers sticking out and animal tranquilizers making me sleepy and content. Hitting the ground on the other side and the Tech Cop metal cars weren’t even out. I knew I was golden. I could outrun these guys. I escaped out of these places about once a week.

The drugs were wearing off so I needed food. I crossed back over into Cascadia through dense pine woods. I guess the plant I had escaped from was somewhere up in Old Alberta. I would spread the word at Mabel’s that the Techs were up there.

I stood in front of an abandoned restaurant on the outskirts of Vancouver and went around back and knocked nine times. A fat, nervous, but pretty face opened the door and then cracked into a full smile “Tecumseh!” Me and Mabel talked about when I met her as kid coming off the road from Chicago and how the ash had rained down like snow for years. I recollected watching my father get punched in the mouth by a Syrian soldier when he asked a question and they asked me if I was his son and I said no. I was overtired and telling my guilty Syrian soldier story from 2019, so Mabel knew I was not doing all right.

“You doing all right Ted?” Mabel said as she had me sit at the kitchen table, now hidden in her own basement, gave me a glass of bourbon and told me she would get some eggs ready. Mabel was a Sober one. Sitting in her basement drawing or reading books or whatever Sober Ones did, but she always had food. Mable never went out robbing for pills, but she had been a major participant in Cascadia becoming independent. She would organize rag-tag homeless boys like myself into well-fed, disciplined workers, farmers, defenders and raiders when the revolution had really got started at the beginning of the 20’s. I would probably be dead if it was not for meeting Mabel and becoming a Captain in the Cascadian Defense Corps back when the real killing started in 21’.

Mabel had bad news. Cascadia was shrinking. We had suffered some recent losses. We held out for ten years, but as Mabel puts it “They have more resources, even if we are right, they have more resources.” She showed me a hand drawn map labeled Spring Advances in Pacific Northwest 2032. “Calgary fell I exclaimed!” Mabel sadly nodded. I was getting upset by the map and I was not used to this much food in my stomach. I had sucked the animal tranquilizer out of the darts I had pulled from my back, so I could look normal in front of Mabel, but now I was shaking and mad. Money, Money and it was worth killing my parents over.  It is easy to get mad at one person, but a greedy ideal, an omnipotent, systematic standard of degradation, marginalization and death was something I could never really deal with in a nice, constructive way like Mable with all her maps and planning. Mabel knew, like most of her soldiers at the end of The Cascadian Independence war knew, that the only thing left to do was escape or destroy, so for fellas like me it was drugs and raiding. Sure we won and there was always optimism and hope in the victory parades and collective farms, but after a few years of fighting to keep Cascadia independent we all felt like little people fighting against machine much bigger than we could ever imagine. I think sometimes of how it could be better, different, but honestly cannot come up with another a better way to behave with the chips being laid as they are.

 I thanked Mabel. She nodded with her full-face, softly-smiling, knowing everything but not saying it. Mabel had become resigned to things she cared deeply about being pulled away and out of her control. She told me to take care of myself as she closed the basement door. Standing upright with my hands pressed against the small of my back I looked up at the clouds and thought of a guy I knew in downtown Vancouver I could get some Iranian quality heroin from.

There was a thin layer of ice crunching in the pine needles. We had a full moon. The first truck was on fire and all the tech cops and workers were laying face down along the road. We had waited until the convoy snaked along the supply highway out of Winnipeg unimpeded through Calgary now, until the convoy had reached this clearing at the top of Mount Hood, before it replenished border guards in Old Idaho. “You ain’t never going to see Idaho.” I screamed into a Chinese soldiers face.

Earlier at Elliot’s after mainlining some of the whitest heroin I have seen since The Calm Days , me, his brother Leonard and some of his cousins got word of a Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and IBM convoy that was moving out of Winnipeg lightly guarded. I heard IBM. Elliot offered me what he called the war vial. Elliot was junked out of his mind. I watched a drop of my blood pull back into the glass vial in the soft brown liquid. PCP, Methamphetamine and Heroin slid into my body as my thumb pushed the plunger down.

Elliot and Leonard were trying to get me to calm down. They said I was being unreasonable. It would cause too much attention. One of the Tech workers talking Chinese got up and ran and I let a rifle round go square in his back. The rest laying face down started to chatter. The Big Bank. When they came in with the Russians and the Iranians the war was all over. I thought of my parents telling me how proud they were of me with ash raining down like snow not melting, but suspended in their hair. The Chinese set up the camps then the plants. Big Bank Country foreclosed on America and turned it into a market. People into machines, and so people become less human. The angelic white of the moon; whenever I scratched it felt good ; I was itchy all over; Sinos begging in wing-wong; I went down the line. I was a very nice, young man. I came from a good family. Elliot, Leonard and their cousins decided to leave me. Leonard was furious at Elliot over letting me have too much, but it was the perfect amount for me. The air set against the pine trees rippled. Somebody once thought I was a good boy and would grow up to be great man. “Teddy,” my Mom intoned. Mixed and embedded experiences of suffering took on the feeling of survival, and of the power I had to survive it all. Going out to ice cream with my Dad after a baseball game; Arab girls pulling their hair extensions out in Damascus clubs over celebrity sex trysts and designer handbags. I kept walking away from the line of bodies face down; Asiatic eyes in tears pleading no; wing-wong; the rifle barrel at the back of the black haired head and the silent flash. It was all over. Nineteen aid-workers dead and executed it would say in news zines all over the Big Bank Country tomorrow. I stood panting at the end of the line of bodies. The blood pooled down into a channel on the slope. I thought how many parts of families I had just destroyed then could not count. I found the truck with all the Pfizer stuff, Elliot and Leonard had been nice and left me with a bag of Hydrocodone, Avinza extended release morphine pills and some Depakote mood stabilizers. Chewing on the pills and sitting in the back of the truck I looked over to the now silent Big Bank Country soldiers and workers with their unnaturally, craned, lifeless necks. The gory row seeped brown blood against the thin ice covering the ground. I wondered how things had got this way.