Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Community

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.