299 Days: The Community

Chapter 103 Facebook Friends (May 10)

The good news kept coming in to Camp Murray where Jeanie Thompson had been working almost non-stop for several days. People were upbeat as they got ready for the 7:00 a.m. briefing.

Jason came in wearing the same suit he had worn a few days before. Jeanie was reminded that her quickly packed suitcase only had a couple of changes of clothes. Oh well, they were saving lives so fashion would have to take a back seat. Besides, everyone else—except the Governor—only seemed to have a few changes of clothes.

Jason had a smile for the first time in days. “Well, we have some good news,” he announced in the conference room where the morning briefings took place. “Actually, quite a bit of it. The first polling since the beginning of the Crisis is in.” He was smiling.

“People are looking to their government for help,” Jason said with a huge grin. “They want us—by a 78% majority—to exercise emergency powers. That’s right: They want us to do what we’re doing and probably do more of it.”

Everyone in the room was smiling and few were high fiving. Not Jeanie. All the others were career Democrat staffers. They were ecstatic about the polling, but Jeanie didn’t believe the numbers. She wanted to believe them. She was part of the government and could see how central planning like they were doing was getting food onto the store shelves and gasoline to the gas stations. But 78%?

Jeanie asked, “What is the sample size?”

Jason got a piece of paper from his stack on the conference room table and said, “Six hundred and fifty-two. Registered voters. Contacted by phone. Seattle metro area.”

That’s why the 78% number was so high. They had contacted the Seattle metro area, where all the liberals lived. And by phone? Jeanine thought, who answers their phone and spends time with a pollster when all this is going on? Old people sitting in their houses? Scared soccer moms sitting in their houses because the authorities told them to? Certainly not people who have evacuated or are waiting in lines at grocery stores. Also, “registered” voters were just about everyone given the “Motor Voter” laws that encouraged everyone getting or renewing a drivers’ license—felons and illegal aliens included—to register to vote. Everyone was a registered voter, but fewer and fewer people were voting in each election. Most people had come to the conclusion that voting did no good. Looking at what was happening around them, they were right. Jeanie dared not say this out loud. It was hard enough being the “token Republican” at the headquarters of Washington State government. There was no need to draw any more attention to herself, though she did know that this poll was absurdly over positive. For the first time, Jeanie thought that not even insiders like her were getting the truth. What else was being hidden from them?

The poll results provided a sense of vindication to everyone else in the room. Government was not only working during the Crisis—people wanted more of it. Government took care of people, and the more desperate they were, the more government the people wanted. This was great. For the government.

Jeanie was thinking about how she might be getting lied to on a daily basis and how she then turned around and told those lies to the media all day long. Was she being used? She kept thinking about that.

While she was halfway paying attention, Jason went over the other positive things that were going on, or were supposedly going on.

Semi-trucks were working pretty much exclusively for the government now. Food, fuel, and medical supplies were being transported from warehouses to distribution centers in large and medium-sized cities with the help of the military.

“Well, most of the military,” Jason said with a frown. “There has been some pretty high incidents of absenteeism.” What Jason didn’t say was, “especially in the South.” Whole units were missing down there. The National Guard in the Southern and mountain Western states were pretty much not showing up for federal duty. They were forming “State Guards” and not following federal orders.

But, things varied. Some units were following orders, others weren’t. There were no clear dividing lines. It varied by state, branch of the military, unit, and down to the individual. Most military people were busy, feverishly doing their jobs to help. When they were working sixteen hours a day loading food onto trucks to get to hungry people, they weren’t thinking about politics. But, little by little, they were thinking about their families and starting to think they needed to be with them. They started to think they needed to leave, even just for a few days to check in on their families. They promised themselves they’d come back to their unit, but few ever did.

Many in the military could see up close all the insanity around them, like the political decisions that were sending aid to favored states and parts of states, especially the cities, while ignoring the rural areas. Lots of them started to wonder why they were helping accomplish this, especially when their families needed them. More than one thought, “What am I fighting for? Socialism?”

Jeanie had to snap out of it. She couldn’t be doubting what she was doing. She had to just do her job. People depended on her for information that was saving lives and keeping people positive, so this didn’t turn into a…it was hard for her to finish that thought. She didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to focus on doing good things.

Her cell phone rang. It was Jim. She had better take it; she hadn’t talked to him in days. She got up out of her chair and went out of the conference room.

She whispered, “Hi.”

Jim, hearing her whispering, whispered, too. “Are you in a place where you can talk?”

Jeanie said, in a regular voice, “Oh, yeah. I was in a meeting. But it’s not a big deal. Where are you?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” Jim said. “In the state, though.” He was tired and Jeanie could tell from his voice that he wasn’t happy.

“Is it safe where you are?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess. But…” Jim started to whisper himself, “they won’t let us have our weapons. They’re locked up. Even the guards are carrying unloaded weapons. It’s like they don’t trust us.” Jim, who was still the conservative Jeanie used to be, knew why. The brass didn’t trust the troops. This was for show. Or, more precisely, was slave labor. The troops were being used as laborers who could be trusted to show up. Pretty much trusted, except not trusted enough to have weapons. Jim felt used.

“I’m doing computer work,” Jim said. He was working on the POI list and trying to find where POIs were, but he couldn’t tell Jeanie that. There hadn’t been much computer activity since the Crisis began. But, occasionally some wanted person would place a cell call from their phone or get on Facebook and publish a manifesto and then they’d know where he or she was. They’d try to send someone out to get them, but the roads were clogged and local law enforcement was too busy to do anything. There weren’t nearly enough federal agents to chase all these leads. And the FCorps was useless, so POIs weren’t getting arrested.

Jim thought the computer work he was doing was a total waste of time. It was pretty much a big game to let his commanding officer send in daily statistics to headquarters saying they located X number of POIs. Everyone felt great about it up the chain of command. Of course, nothing was actually getting done about it.

Jeanie started to whisper herself. “Did you see Grant Matson and the other WAB guys on the POI list?”

Jim was silent. Crap. He had not seen them on the list, but he had been concentrating on tiny little pieces of the list, the ones who were stupid enough to use their cell phones or get onto the internet under their real names.

People Jim knew were on the POI list? That meant, at some point, the brass might know that he knew them. This wasn’t good.

“Really? No way,” said Jim. “We were over to Grant’s house, like, last year. That’s got to be some kind of mistake. We’re finding mistakes on the list. That must be one of them. There’s no way Grant is a ‘terrorist.’”

Jim wasn’t supposed to say that part about them finding mistakes. Not on an unsecure phone line; a cell phone, no less. And a cell phone at Camp Murray where his brass were. It was stupid to talk about this, especially on the cell phone.

Jim and Jeanie were silent for a while trying to think of what to say. What do you say? Their friends were wanted and they were deep inside the government and supposed to be finding them. That wasn’t a typical conversation topic for a long distance love affair.

After a while, Jim said, “It’s a mistake. It has to be. Um, Jeanie, you’re not a Facebook friend with them are you?” Jim didn’t want to give away anything about how they were using Facebook.

“No, I unfriended them when Grant left the Auditor’s Office,” she said. “Menlow didn’t want us to have any links to WAB. And, yes, I know about Facebook and how we are using it.”

“We” are using it. Jim noted that Jeanie had said, “we.” Oh God. Jeanie and him were spying on their friends, all to secure a steady paycheck.

Oh shit. Shit. He remembered that he was a Facebook friend of Grant’s and, he thought, maybe Brian Jenkins, Tom Foster, and Ben Trenton. Jim couldn’t remember because he didn’t use Facebook much and hadn’t logged on in quite a while. If Jim were a Facebook friend of some POIs, he’d lose his security clearance, or maybe worse. Or they’d try to use him to lure the POIs into custody. He felt sick. He felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He felt the adrenaline running through him like a poison. He couldn’t talk. He tried to tell Jeanie he had to go, but his words were mush. He had to check Facebook.

“Are you OK?” Jeanie asked when Jim was mumbling.

“I gotta go,” Jim finally said. He hung up.

Jeanie could tell that Jim was terrified about something, but she didn’t know what.

She went back into the conference room. Jason was still talking about the polling and how great things were going, but Jeanie didn’t believe him anymore. There was no way all these wonderful things were really happening. She was trapped in Camp Murray—there were literally machine guns and barbed wire surrounding her—so she couldn’t get out and see what was going on out there. She started to wonder: what was really happening? She suddenly had the worst feeling that she was on the wrong side.