299 Days: The Visitors

Chapter 147 Double Tall Latte (June 5)

Professor Carol Matson was clinging to her normal life as much as possible, which meant a double tall latte from the University book store. She loved them; their smell, the warmth of the cup, the caffeine rush that would follow. She ordered one and sat out in the beautiful sunshine on the campus of the University of Washington. She held the latte with both hands like it was a gold bar. Smelling it made her relax. She felt so comfortable and at ease. She took a sip. Oh, that was good. Just like she’d remembered. She hadn’t had one in a month. Now they had lattes again at the bookstore. Well, for faculty like her. Not just anyone could get one of these lattes. She believed in equal treatment for the masses, but had to admit that if lattes were in short supply, she was glad to be one of the few who could get them.

The first week or two of the Crisis had been a little dicey with the power outages, the empty shelves, and the crime. She had pretty much stayed in her little house by the campus in Seattle when all the crime was happening. She couldn’t blame people for taking things. They were poor and had been oppressed by the system for generations. It was reparations, really, for an unjust capitalist system. That’s what everyone thought. At least, that’s what all her friends at the University were saying.

A woman who lived two houses down from Carol had been raped. That was terrible. Typical macho male behavior. Carol kept her doors locked so she would be safe. She didn’t have a gun, of course. Those were terribly dangerous. They always just went off for no reason. She’d read that in the New York Times. Besides, guns were illegal in Seattle under the new emergency laws. She wouldn’t be caught dead with one. Imagine what her friends would say. It was unthinkable.

Carol was so thankful for all that the government was doing for her. They were getting food to the stores and she could get plenty of it with her FCard. There was no more organic food, but at least there was food again. She’d lost a few pounds since the beginning of the Crisis, which was probably a good thing. See, she said to herself, the government is thinking of everything. We’re all healthier now.

Carol was especially thankful that the government was finally cracking down on all those rednecks. They were the terrorists who were causing all the problems. If those macho “Patriots” would just stop trying to hurt people and impose their corporate religious philosophy on everyone, things would be back to normal in no time.

She tried not to think about it—tried really hard, in fact—but there was some misunderstanding that her own brother, Grant, was one of the “terrorists.” She knew he was on the POI list, but she was sure it was a mistake. She simply refused to believe that the government was out to get her brother. Why would they? He was a harmless guy.

Besides, she kept telling herself, the POI list was just “persons of interest,” not “people wanted for crimes.” Her brother probably knew where some of the Republican politicians were hiding out and the authorities wanted to know where they were because they were probably terrorists. Her brother was just wanted for questioning. That made sense.

A little part of her, however, thought her brother might actually be working for the so-called “Patriots.” His politics were misguided, but his heart was in the right place. She kept flashing back to their childhood in Forks. She remembered how Grant would protect her from the “Ogre,” which was their dad who constantly yelled at them and sometimes hit them. She remembered how Grant, at a young age, was forced to fight. He hated doing it, but sometimes he was the only one who could stand up to men trying to hurt innocent people. If there were some innocent people down in Olympia being mistreated, Carol thought, Grant was probably trying to protect them. That might have got him in trouble, she realized. But he could explain his way out of it. He was always good at that.

Holding that warm and fabulous latte got Carol thinking about another aspect of her brother’s wayward politics: how to explain to her colleagues that her brother was a POI. She felt bad for having this selfish thought, but she had it nonetheless. She assumed the University knew about her brother. She hoped that they wouldn’t suspect her. No one from the University had talked to her about him being on the POI list and the amount on her FCard had not been cut, so she assumed she was probably OK. She confided with her friends that her brother was a POI. But, she added, it was closed-minded thinking like her brother’s that drove her from that hell hole of Forks and into an open-minded and diverse community, like the University. She was embellishing about how bad Grant’s politics were, but she felt like she needed to do that so she wasn’t suspected. Grant would understand.

Her professor friends felt sorry for her. Every family can have shame; even a very smart and progressive person like Carol can have an embarrassing family member. It wasn’t her fault. Her brother had just fallen for the lies of conservative America.

Now that all the conservatives had been exposed for the criminals they were, the government could do all the things people like Carol had always wanted them to do. They had nationalized everything. Good. It was about time.

At the University, the government was utilizing public resources for the public good. Since most of the students had left to go home, either because of the budget cuts before the Crisis or the crime, the dorms and off-campus housing were largely empty. So, the authorities wisely used the dorms to house Freedom Corps volunteers.

The Freedom Corps volunteers lived communally and were trained at the University. Carol’s specialty, Latin literature of the Bolivarian era, was not in high demand, so she taught Spanish to the Freedom Corps. She was so happy to have a job again. She also counseled them on the other social services available to them now that they had volunteered to help the public. She loved it. It was so nice to see people selflessly serving their fellow humans.

The University sought out disadvantaged groups, primarily Latinos who had come up from Mexico when the troubles started down there, and housed them in the nearby off-campus privately owned apartments. The University exercised some emergency powers and took over these privately-owned apartments and assigned them to disadvantaged persons. About time, Carol thought. She never understood how someone could “own” a piece of property when other people needed to use it for free. That seemed so selfish.

Carol was doing her part for the Recovery—that was the term the authorities used while trying to get back to normal after the Crisis. She asked to have a family placed in her home. She spoke fluent Spanish, although she spoke an academic dialect. After a long paperwork hassle, Carol finally got her new house guests. They were Maria, a mother in her early twenties, and her two sons, Enrique and Fabiano.

They were scared when they arrived at Carol’s little house. They’d been through horrible things making their way out of Mexico and up to L.A. They fled L.A. for Seattle after the riots. Carol was glad to have them and they were glad to be safe in Seattle. The government gave Maria an FCard. Maria and the boys were excellent houseguests. They felt like a family.

Things were going pretty well in Seattle, Carol thought. The progressives were finally in charge. We are finally doing what should have been done all along, she thought. In the past, Carol had spent a lot of time in Venezuela. As a Simon Bolivar-era expert, she frequently guest lectured down there. Venezuela was run right, and now she was seeing the same thing up here in America. Finally. The government owned most things, supplied the people with what they needed, essentially outlawed private property, and had a strong civilian security force to crack down on the conservatives trying to take all of this away from the people.

Carol’s job of teaching Spanish to the Freedom Corps volunteers puzzled her. She knew there were plenty of native speakers in the Freedom Corps, so she suspected she wasn’t there just to teach Spanish.

Sure enough, during her orientation for the new job, she was told that some of the teabaggers had infiltrated the Freedom Corps. Federal officials believed the redneck spies inside the FC would go out and commit atrocities in FC uniforms to turn the people against their leaders. Therefore, the Freedom Corps trainees needed to be evaluated and watched for political loyalty. Carol was proud to be selected as one of the people who would ensure that the FC remained loyal. The whole Recovery—and the fundamental transformation of the old system they’d been promised—was riding on the population seeing how well they were treated by the new system. That way, they wouldn’t want the old capitalist system back. Carol was on the lookout for “Patriot” spies. She blocked out of her mind the fact that her own brother was a “Patriot” POI. The fact that he was on the POI list merely meant that mistakes could be made, and she was going to work hard to make sure that no mistakes were made regarding the people she was overseeing. Grant became the reason why she worked so hard to be accurate with the information she passed on.

As she took her last sip of the delicious latte, she thought about the future. She’d spent so much time over the last few weeks only worrying about the present – food for today, electricity being on today, and not having someone break in today – that it felt kind of good to think about the future.

She was just fine with the future. Sure, things were still rocky out there, but the right people were finally running things. She had some wonderful houseguests, and she was doing something important for the people with her work with the FC.

Despite all of this, Carol was still scared. The crime scared her some, but it had already been increasing for years, and she had just learned to accept it. She was scared that the right-wingers would win. Sure, the progressives, like her, had a safe enclave in Seattle and its surrounding areas, but outside of Seattle, the teabaggers seemed to be running things.

With her first caffeine rush in over a month, she was thinking more clearly. Maybe this won’t be temporary, she thought for the first time. All along, she had been told that these emergency measures would be lifted soon and things would get back to normal. But, now that things were stabilized and the right people were finally in charge, she actually didn’t want to go back to the way things were before the Collapse. She liked the way things were in Seattle currently, they suited her just fine.