Angels Mark (The Serena Wilcox Mysteries Dystopian Thriller Trilogy) (3 page)

Serena posted a message to the off-grid forum, and within ten minutes heard back from a spokesperson from Off-grid-ghost, a grassroots organization which sounded like a human smuggling ring. Tom joined the group too, and by the end of the week, they’d both told their story. Off-grid-ghost immediately offered them a house where they could hide, an old farm house on a leftover slice of Minnesota farm land, completely obscured from the road. All they wanted in return was $10,000 cash and an agreement to keep their organization secret. Rent was to be paid through Off-grid-ghost: landlord and tenant were forbidden to know each other, although both were required to be members of the network.

The house was selected because records of the dwelling and property were from so long ago that no one would find them without knowing exactly what to look for, and maybe not even then. Archived paper records were often lost or destroyed from the perils of long term storage, and no one had bothered to go back far enough to digitize the records. Chances were good that there was no trace of this house existing, which qualified the location for endorsement by Off-grid-ghost, said their spokesman.

So far, everything was going according to plan, but Tom and Serena were both nervous about falling in with a radical organization like Off-grid-ghost. Yet what choice did they have if they didn’t know how to disappear on their own?

It was only because they were computer savvy that they were able to learn about the underground off-the-grid network; and that was where their escape-plotting skills ended. They had no current passports and there wasn’t enough time to obtain them. They didn’t know what else to do, so they turned to what was, in their minds, a whack-job fringe group to help them hide. Tom and Serena considered themselves to be normal people, who just happened to find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. How could they explain their actions in a way that would not make them look crazy?

The off-grid plan was the only plan they had, so they had to trust that it would work. They weren’t even sure what to wish for: was it better if nothing
bad happened, and they messed up their lives for no reason? Or was it better to be “right”, and not crazy? How could it be that two college educated people from suburbia would be so paranoid as to stage their deaths so that they could hide from their own government, dragging their three children with them?

They could analyze this over and over, but in the end they had only two choices: ignore the warning they believed to be true, or compl
y with what the government wanted. Always people of action when they believed in something, they felt they had no other option. So even though they knew very little about Minnesota, they committed to the plan right away. It was a place to hide. Hide and wait to see what would happen.

3

Paul greeted General Gustavo Marino with a hearty handshake. Gustavo accepted the gesture, but kept his eyes focused on the back of President John William’s gray head, which was fast slipping away to the end of Gustavo’s imaginary leash. Gustavo ended the handshake quickly, and then moved forward in the procession, without ever really looking at Paul. Paul mentally shrugged his shoulders – it wasn’t important to his plan to be seen.

As Paul fell back from the entourage and let the media pass him by, he watched the President’s well-tailored pin-stripe suit disappear into the crowd on the tarmac. He kept up as best he could from a distance, but he hoped he could close the gap before the President got on the plane. He wanted a closer look at the man who was the President of the Liberty Union, which was comprised of the East Coast states (the ones still inhabitable anyway), the Southern states, and much of the eastern Midwest, a union otherwise known as “The Free States”.

Paul caught a break when President John Williams agreed to answer questions from a handful of reporters. Everyone knew that what this really meant was that Williams had a speech prepared, probably a long-winded one. Paul settled into a comfortable standing posture. While his view was mostly obstructed by the crowd and the mob of security detail around Williams, Paul would have plenty of time to study the man, while he himself went completely unnoticed. He turned on his cell phone to start recording. He planned to show the footage to Clyde later that night.

A surfer-boy aide with a perfect smile set up a portable podium right there on the tarmac and donned it with a fabric covering depicting the Liberty Union seal. Before the aide had given the final straightening tug on the fabric, President Williams placed himself in a rehearsed photogenic position behind the podium. He catered to the crowd for a few minutes before rattling off a speech that would make the speech writer, unknown to anyone until now, an instant celebrity.

Throughout history, our Constitution, the Constitution of the United States of America, has been rewritten. But if you’re like me, you never thought that the Constitution would ever really change again. But we should have paid better attention in our history classes because, if we had, then we’d have known that the Constitution was built to be fluid.

Anyone hear of a little thing called the Bill of Rights, which added 10 amendments? You might not remember that the Bill of Rights was added eighteen months after the Constitution was drafted. From 1789 to 1992, the Constitution was amended 27 times!

And, through judicial review, the meaning of parts of the Constitution has been changed many times. But I bet you didn’t know this: There’s a magical Article that could change the Constitution completely, Article 5, which notes the concept of the Amendment Convention.

What’s that, you say? Well, no one really knows. It’s not been used. The power or limits of such a convention are unknown because there has never been a time in history, except for now of course, in which this article was utilized. Scholars tell me, though, that a Convention would be able to propose any change to the Constitution it decided to, including full replacement. Did you hear that? FULL REPLACEMENT! I bet you never knew that. I sure didn’t.

So obviously, that’s where we are today. That’s how the former United States radically changed the Constitution and our government. That’s how we ended up with President Kinji on the West and yours truly as President of the East, and states in between naturally. Some say that our great nation has been hacked, sawed in two, and destroyed. If you believe the late night talk show hosts, we’ve become like Oz, with witches of the East and West, and everyone waiting for Dorothy to deliver the broomstick.

But we’ve got to stop thinking that way! We are the same great nation under God. We are! We are merely exercising our right to tap into Article 5. We did this within the Constitution, as laid out to us by our forefathers. We are not divided! We are united in our history. We are united in our memories of an early America.

You don’t believe that America has ever wanted change? We have precedent, you know. There have been many proposals for substantial change to the Constitution throughout history. Thomas Jefferson himself was wary of the power of the dead over the living, something that would happen if we had an unchanging Constitution. Without giving you too much of a history lesson, let me say this: To guarantee that each generation has a say in the framework of the government, Jefferson proposed that the Constitution, and each one following it, would expire after 19 or 20 years. Expire!

Jefferson advised that we retool, we update, we re-evaluate, we re-organize. Jefferson knew that life is about changing. America would change; and the government needed to change along with it. The people needed to have the freedom to change our government. Jefferson said this! Long before the Big War!

Let’s stay in early American history for a while. In 1932, William Kay Wallace, a U.S. diplomat, proposed not only changing the Constitution, but replacing it! He would replace the states with nine geographically-based entities, each with an equal representation in a national Board of Directors. A President would be chosen from the Board; the new states would have similar systems. Sound familiar?

Back in 1932 we were talking about changing things up, governing ourselves differently; even dividing the states up into groups. What’s so new about what’s going on today? What’s so new about the concept of two Presidents? Nothing! Turns out, it’s not such a new idea after all. Someone thought of it way back in 1932.

Let’s move ahead to the World War 11 era, specifically 1942. Henry Hazlitt, a conservative journalist, wrote that the time of the War was a perfect time to contemplate changing the Constitution; and that the War was pointing out several of the Constitution's weaknesses. Alexander
Hehmeyer, who wrote a book in 1943, also thought that the war period was a perfect time to institute change, when people were in crisis mode. War time? Crisis mode? Sound familiar?

History repeats itself. We aren’t doing anything new here! We are the
same
America! We are responding to the times, just like we’ve always done.

Which brings us to Thomas
Finletter, a special assistant to the Secretary of State, who authored a book published in 1945: He proposed to allow the President to dissolve Congress and the Presidency. You see where I’m going with this?

We Americans have thought about shaking things up way before now. We are the creators here, the innovators, the movers and shakers. We are the Super Power. We did not crumble, we were not ‘divided and conquered’ as some have said. We simply pioneered a new trail; a trail that many of us have thought was a long time in coming. A trail that Jefferson envisioned from the very beginning!

Think this is all ancient history? Let’s move ahead now to 1974. Rexford Tugwell, an economist who worked with FDR, suggested we have two Vice-Presidents instead of just one. Hey, we did that! We have two Vice-Presidents. Sure, we threw in an extra President too, but you see what I’m saying. We Americans have been mulling over making changes for years! Big ones! From our forefathers up until contemporary times!

This is not new, people. We are not brought to reform against our will. We walk willingly forward, boldly! The terrorists did not do this to us. We have the power here. We have the voice. We have the freedom to choose.

Let’s move forward again in time. After Watergate, there were many calls for changes in the Constitution. That should surprise no one.

But let’s skip ahead to even more contemporary times. Arthur Miller, law professor at George Washington University, wrote a book published in 1987, that called for, among other things, the redrawing of state lines. Redrawing of state lines! Re-structuring! See? We have done nothing new here. We have had these ideas in early history, and we’ve had them as recently as 1987.

Now we’re getting close to present day, and we can’t really talk about voices of reform without focusing on the Internet. Wow, do we ever have the freedom to voice who we are as Americans, and what we want. So what were people saying, in the years, months, weeks, and yes, even days before the Big War?

‘The U.S. Constitution for 21st Century’ web site had posted this quote: ‘Unique, innovative, venerable in its time, our more than 200-year old Constitution now has become antiquated and obsolete — even detrimental and dangerous — for the nation.’ Now does that sound like an America that doesn’t want change? This is but a tiny sample of what the American people were saying about our Constitution right up to the day we forever changed as a nation. The day we became ‘divided’ as some have called it – is that the right way to look at it?

Are we ‘divided’? No! If you’ve paid attention, and I thank you for your patience, then you know I’m leading up to this: We are still the United States of America, one nation, under God. We are. We are whole. We are together. We are one. We have restructured. We have listened to the call for change. That’s all. We are still America. And to that end: God Bless America!

John Williams gave a flourishing salute to presumably all Americans, and waited for the predictable cheers. William, who was last year a little-known but long-time senator, was now one of the most famous faces in the world, as the first President the New Conservative Party, which some had characterized as nothing more than a revamped version of the disbanded Republican Party. Conversely, the Democratic Union was often characterized as old guard Dems, even though President Kinji described herself as an Independent.

President Ann Kinji held the honor of being both the first female president, and the first Japanese-American president, of the Democratic Union. Kinji, who had been a Presidential cabinet appointee during the years leading up to World War III, was, not surprisingly, a well-known force in the then Democratic Party. The party system had been abolished post WWIII, but nonetheless, Kinji’s cabinet, and all of her supporters, had been dubbed “The New Liberals”.  Many Americans, Paul included, believed that the two party system had never died, but lived on under new labels.

The split of the United States of America was the result of six months of emotional deliberation without a single recess, and was, in the end, swiftly agreed to with very little opposition, with no one but the media allowed in. Every American could watch history play out on their televisions, computers, phones, hand-held gadgets, and even large screens on metro buildings. But watching from afar was not good enough for Paul. Whenever he could be there in person, he was.

He was in the crowd in Chicago when the last President of the United States, the
real
President, shocked the world with words that still rang in Paul’s head. That famous speech, the transcript, and excerpts, now re-printed on everything from posters to blankets, was in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric he’d just heard Williams spew. No, the most famous speech in the world was full of real heartbreak, real grief, real tears. It was worthy to be listed alongside any speech of Abraham Lincoln’s. It was a speech in which no one took a breath, straining to hear every incredible syllable. For generations to come, people would recall where their ancestors were when they heard this speech:

Emergency times call for emergency measures. The needs of the East and the West are diverse. We have eight U.S. governors in a perpetual state of emergency, while five states are unsafe to reside in, and three states are completely gone. This is not the time for politics or party lines. We need to remove all obstacles. This must be a working government, running not on principles and ideas, but we must instead be as foremen leading re-construction.

For the good of the country, I will step down as President of the United States, after appointing not one, but two, Presidents to govern over this beloved nation. It will take all of us working together to rewrite our Constitutional laws, and to pass all the necessary bills to make this happen, but I know we can do it. We must do it. We must come together to create a new, more efficient, way to govern. Our nation has changed.

We are a nation in crisis, unparalleled to anything the world has seen. We need an emergency response, a response that will streamline government. We will face difficulties beyond what our forefathers ever imagined. We must find a way to get closer to the people, to get smaller, to delegate the workload of rebuilding our nation.

I believe in this plan. I believe that our nation is best served by two Presidents, and by both parties, in a shared system of government that divides the nation into two equal parts. With your blessing, I will appoint two people to serve for a period of 18 months. But I assure you, elections will be held swiftly, to replace my appointees with the choice of the people.

The two Presidents shall work together, but will govern separately, much the way our individual states have always been served by Governors. This is not the death of America, but an emergency response to emergency conditions. We shall forever in our hearts be one nation under God, and though divided by governing bodies, still indivisible in spirit. With liberty and justice for all, may we one day soon be a prosperous nation once again, whose citizens live without fear, and whose children know peace. God bless America.

Paul would never forget that speech, and he felt that President John Williams missed the mark entirely with his own attempt at making a speech for the history books. Williams could never match the passion or talent for oration that the former president had, even though Williams was pompous enough to try, and obviously thought of himself as an equal or, Paul sneered, even the better man. No, Williams was the inferior man in Paul’s eyes, in polish, strength, and cleverness.