Chapter 1: Angeltown by Joseph Callahan

June 19th, 2035: The dissolution of giants UniversalEducation and All Schools Management led to a third of all education stock losing ninety percent of its value. There was nothing to worry about, the experts said, for there was still enough education for everyone who deserved it. 

Citizens’ News

Chapter 1: Angeltown

In his time in the military in the 2040s, Martin worked the border between the Southwest   United States and North Mexico. He had various skills including breaking and entering, assault, destroying property by hand, explosives, and demolition, silent killing, loud killing, all sorts of killing. Martin could even subdue his prey in various ways without killing, if asked to. 

He stood five-foot-six, muscular, and worked out constantly as if the muscles could make up for him being shorter than most men in the military. He had little hair on his body, never did have much. His skin turned tanning-bed brown due to life-enhancing chemicals (steroids) he ingested and outdoor activities involving his work. Martin would never admit that some of that pigment came from gypsies. At thirty-two, he expected more out of life, but considering he came from a family of grifters and travelers, he did well for himself.

He wasn’t part of the regular patrol; they had stations every two hundred miles along the fortified border. His job was to intercept Coyotes and Barracudas trying to bring illegal crossers over. And Martin had a dozen informers that each had dozens of informers and so on, a whole network across the South. The State Auto-Defense Forces also called upon him when chatter on the Governet indicated there might be an illegal crossing, and by 2045, five years after North Mexican independence, all crossings were illegal.  

Martin was stationed in Angeltown, and that meant hours of driving to and from the border or days on the road in stations and hours waiting for action. Crossing overland was suicide due to the searing heat, the wolves looking for meat, and the man-made traps disabling or killing crossers; only the most fool-hardy tried a land crossing. Mexican loyalist and a few other unfortunates had no other option but to escape overland or be killed by the North Mexican Army, a collection of drug lords, business interests, and former officers from the military. Most crossers, however, tried to enter through bribery or by boat from the Gulf of North Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. 

Martin’s squadron received a reliable report that illegals would be trying to cross into the U.S. at Steven Spielberg National Beach and Recreation Area, so they drove to the coast north of Saint Monique to investigate. Martin wasn’t much for the open sea, in fact, he would get seasick in a bath tub. So he took the squadron to the coastal landing point and let another commander take the boat. 

Weeds and desert scrub enveloped the coast up to the clearing at a boat landing. Martin’s team waited for the arrivals at the edge of the road where the beach started, and three forcemen  waited in a boat slightly north of the inlet. After a few minutes, they heard a motor coming up the coast, then the gurgling of the engine in the water after it shut off. Once again, the informant had earned his pieces. 

Martin’s team waited in silence for nearly ten minutes until they could hear the boat landing in the opening in front of them. Moments after the North Mexicans landed, Martin rolled a flare onto the tiny beach at the feet of the unauthorized entrants. The rest of the forcemen turned their flashlights on them. He saw a familiar sight: a Barracuda, the captain of the small boat, a man, a woman who was probably his wife, three kids, maybe aged three, eight and ten years old. Six people in all. 

“Manos arriba!” shouted Martin in his border-guard Spanish. They all raised their hands, including the barracuda. The forcemen moved forward into position and Martin shot the boat captain between the eyes, making the other entrants jump in the sizzling heat like grease off a steak. The parents covered their children’s eyes. His men didn’t bat an eye. You would think death would be a deterrent to barracudas coming up the coast with cargo, but they keep coming, thought Martin. “Hanson!” he shouted, “Make sure this corpse is sent south as an example.” Maybe they will catch on this time. Hanson and another forceman unrolled a stretcher, placed the barracuda on it, and walked to their support van. They drove off toward the nearest air field to dump the body over the border for would-be entrants to see. 

Martin turned to the other forcemen. “Let’s get these folks in the truck for distribution.” Then he signaled the boat the all clear by waving a flashlight in their direction. The boat motored off. Martin and his squad walked back to the van with the illegal entrants in tow. They were placed in the back with Duke Johnson and Robert Lee Johnson, no relation, although Robert Lee swears he’s related to a general from something called The Confederacy. 

Martin went into the driver’s seat with another senior officer riding shotgun. Two other men sat behind them with the five passengers in the cabin sitting on the benches on either side of the truck bed with Johnson and Johnson. Martin drove off and took a left down a hidden roadway covered with tall grasses and headed north toward the main access road that traveled east. 

They drove for twenty-five minutes to a warehouse where the children would be auctioned off. Since The Sterilization, wealthy parents were paying top dollar for kids even ten-years-old. The three-year-old would fetch the highest price. The three children were escorted to the entrance of the warehouse where they would be put into their holding cell. A commodities assessor greeted them and started to work out an initial bid on the merchandise and a child psychologist talked to the children in an attempt to keep them well behaved and thus fetch a higher price at auction at the end of the week. 

As the children were taken away, the mother shouted “No lleva mis niños, no!” as she tried in vain to escape the grasp of a man one hundred and fifty pounds heavier than her. The forcemen sedated the mother. They sent her in another vehicle to where they recruited maids for the Insiders. She’s young enough, thought Martin.

“Que va a pasar con mi familia?!” yelled the father, jumping forward. 

Martin held him back. “You’re family’s going to work, a trabajar. We’re giving them a new life, an oportunidad bien…bien.” The illegal tried to get past Martin who clamped onto his throat, and lifted him off the ground as a warning. Then Martin spoke slowly and deliberately while holding him aloft, “It’s an oportunidad to gain your freedom. Me entiendes, señor?” The migrant froze in terror and started losing oxygen. Once his wife was out of sight, Martin released him. 

Perhaps he would be a gardener or work construction. However, Martin had another idea. He was moonlighting as a recruiter for something they called The Middle Eastern Hunt, a game show where trackers would chase down Middle Eastern looking men. Martin walked to the van, gathered his tablet, and went back to the father.

“Como se llama?” Martin asked.

The father caught his breath. “Hector,” he answered. 

“Okay Hector, want to earn some money, dinero?” Martin rubbed his thumb against his first two fingers. “Dinero?” 

Then he turned on his tablet and hit the video conference button. He clicked kgriffin from the menu. Kyle Griffin’s tablet beeped three times before he picked up. 

“Martin, it’s late, what the hell?” whined Kyle. 

“Kyle, I found another player for your television show.” He turned the tablet toward Hector who sobbed. “Cuantos años, señor?” He scanned the tablet up and down Hector’s body for Kyle to inspect. 

Hector trembled. “Triente años.” Martin turned the tablet back toward himself. “He’s thirty years old. He has a family, and if you could promise him a reunion with his wife, at least, he’ll play along.” 

“Send me a picture,” said Kyle half asleep. 

“And we have the same deal, right Kyle?” asked Martin. “Yea, same deal.” Kyle hung up. 

Martin looked at Hector, “It’s your lucky day. Estas de suerte, Hector. Mi jefe tiene trabajo para ti. We have some work for you.” Hector looked uncomfortable at the suggestion. “Venga,” said Martin.

Martin opened the passenger seat. “Get in. We have a long trip ahead.” Hector got in the car and Martin shut the door.

At 6:30 am, Theo met his mother at the door of their home as he left for school. 

“Do you have to leave so early, Thelonious Adisa Babar?” asked his mother. 

Theo kissed his mother on the cheek. “I told Francis I would meet him early to help him with some homework,” he said. 

Dad had already gone to work, and mom would be leaving soon. He left their small, comfortable home and ambled like an ostrich, bobbing his head and afro up and down, toward the school library that opened at 7 a.m. That would give him and Francis about forty minutes to study for their math test. 

Thelonious Babar, Theo, was born in January of 2036. He was thin and lanky with a milk chocolate complexion. His mother, Elizabeth Petros, was a Greek American and his immigrant father, Antoine Babar, was a refugee from Tunisia.

The Babar family were poor but comfortable and hardly noticed their economic state unless a crisis arose like an unplanned medical bill. Their car mostly stayed in the driveway except for special occasions or emergencies. They had each other and had the necessities of life. 

On Friday nights, their friend Larry, a neighbor from down the street who worked with his dad, would come over with a Japanese horror movie. 

“Hey Larry,” said Theo, “What you got for us this time?”

“I thought I would change it up a bit and we could watch The Bad Seed, a classic from when cinema mattered.” 

“What is the The Bad Seed about?” 

“Well, my fine people,” Larry said to Theo and his parents with an air of British pomposity. “The Bad Seed is a scary film full of surprises about a bad, evil little girl and all of the trouble she causes.”

“Sounds good. Perhaps we can stay up late and watch my favorite, Kwaidan afterwards.” He look to his parents. 

His parents nodded in agreement. They were just glad to have a distraction from the tragedy of daily life.

Larry winked at his parents. “I think your son likes Kwaidan because he’s attracted to the tattoos, aren’t you, Theo?” 

Theo smiled and played it off. “Well, the body art is fantastic.”

The 2035 English Only Laws banned Spanish and other languages from public and private usage. Using Spanish was a criminal offense and all place names and signs in Spanish would be changed to English over time. Thus, Los Angeles became Angeltown. The government couldn’t, however, fix everyone’s names, yet. So those foreign words were left to die out. 

Theo blended in well with the Mexican Americans and liked Spanish. If he wasn’t considered Mexican at school, others would think he was Middle Eastern. That was fine in his neighborhood, but at school, he could get hassled by whites and other non-Arabs. 

Most of the Latinos came from North Mexico or were born in Angeltown, and despite the English only laws, still spoke Spanish at home. Theo was an American from Angeltown who spoke English better than most people in California and most of his friends. 

He had his share of insecurities, but his friend Francis was a living identity crisis. Francis described himself as “a dumpy white kid” from the ghetto. That made Theo sad, but also made him laugh. 

“Come on Francis, you have potential,” Theo would say, trying to convince himself and Francis at the same time. “Let’s make sure you keep your C rating, okay?” They dug into the math, with Francis again questioning the purpose of learning algebra when he would never be a scientist. 

“How about learning enough so the scientists can’t take advantage of you,” Theo said. Francis smiled even though he didn’t quite understand what Theo meant. 

Theo studied and read a lot of history, and that got him into trouble with his teachers; by 2035, teaching history that happened before 2008 was prohibited in Angeltown. “Mr. Smits, what happened in 2001 that led to the Mideast wars?” Theo asked. 

He was quickly shot down. “The Mideast Wars are fabrications of the radical left who want to overthrow the government.” The teacher looked at his seating chart, “and that will be enough from you Babar!” Theo knew what that meant, and after that, he stopped asking questions of his teachers. He stuck to asking questions of his mom and dad who remembered time before history.  

Theo found historical material in underground bookstores and the hidden sections in the Central Library in Angeltown with the help from the keepers of the books. He didn’t live far from the library, only a thirty-minute walk from his house. There, he found old history books like L.A. Confidential, a true crime history of Los Angeles. In these books, Theo learned about the dangerous past of L.A., now Angeltown. Mentioning Los Angeles was prohibited, and the novels were historical documents, Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion being the most profound archivers of the history of Los Angeles. 

Though many people called Theo the “coolest kid in school,” all he felt was ordinary. For his strange appearance and unique background, he saw himself as just a regular kid with typical teenage angst and desires: what girls to like if you even like girls, how to talk to them, what classes to take, who to spend time with, what to eat, if to eat, what to wear, even who to sit next to in class. The one social advantage he had was he really liked people. He had friends in every formal and informal club at school, from nerds to jocks to speech club to drama, every club except the Patrioteers who were too bigoted and nationalistic for Theo to want to befriend.  

“Hey Bob,” Theo said to his classmate as they headed to lunch. 

“Hey Theo,” said Bob, looking down at his shoes. 

“Still having trouble with the algebra?” 

“Yeah,” he said. “The teacher always stands over me and pokes his finger on my paper when he talks.” 

Theo put his arm on Bob’s shoulders, “Here’s what you do. Volunteer when you know an answer. Most teachers will leave you alone for the rest of the class if you volunteer once.” 

“Thanks,” Bob said, still looking at his shoes. 

“Hey Bob, I’ll be at the library on Saturday if you want to study some math.” 

“Thanks.”

Theo’s trick for making friends was that he listened. He had learned to listen from his mom who learned studying communication and working as a counselor at Angeltown College. One day Theo talked to her about going to high school, the Belmont High Nanomed Academy, about making friends and being accepted. His mother told him, “All you have to do is be quiet and listen, and people will accept you or not.” Theo practiced listening every day. Sometimes he had difficulty paying attention when he didn’t really like someone, but he understood it was still a good habit.

On Saturday morning, Theo walked to the Central Library. His trips took up half his day with the rest of his time spent walking to friends’ homes. He walked through his neighborhood of boarded up buildings and visible debris of torn down houses—ranch style, A-frames, all styles. The area showed signs of decay similar to other poor areas of Angeltown. 

On one trip, he met a girl from his school that he recognized, Chava Chavez. She was an athletic and slim girl, half-Jewish and half-Mexican, nothing special, he thought, except she retained a curiosity about the world and asked lots of questions. And, she had purple hair. Girls could get away with purple hair as long as they dressed neat and clean and not provocatively. Chava also ran on the school track team, like Jesse Owens who ran against the terrible Nazis in the book “The Jesse Owens Story.” Being able to run like that is cool. 

Because of the danger of being sent to truancy prison, Theo saw no other way but to tutor his friends so they wouldn’t be expelled from school. He taught them how to respond to teachers in class, how to navigate software programs, and how to answer standardized test questions to stay above a C rating in school.

“Hey, how’s it going in school, still keeping those Cs?” Theo asked Chava. After asking, Theo thought that the question was kind of an insult. 

But Chava didn’t take it that way. “I’m fine, except history, I can’t get into that sh…stuff, you know?” 

“Sure, I know what you mean. It’s pretty terrible. But I can show you how to write the essays and pass, and they seldom change the questions. They want you to basically mimic the prompts but use your own language. I got into trouble once actually answering a question with an original thought. I didn’t do that again,” Theo explained.

Chava laughed. 

She met Theo at the library the next Saturday. Theo showed her how to write the essays and how or to get along with teachers in class. 

“The trick is not to stand out by asking too many questions or showing initiative, said Theo. “Just answer the questions asked and don’t ask any.” 

“But what if I have questions?” 

“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you. If you have a question, you can ask me, and we can look for the answers together.” 

“Deal.” She nodded. 

“And keep your eyes on your paper, book, or tablet. If you catch the teacher’s eye, they might call on you,” he added. “Most of all, look busy, even if you are bored.”  

The next time he saw Chava, Theo gave her one of his favorite books on Angeltown history, Ask the Dust by John Fante. “It’s about a time he called The Depression, when people lived really poor but had dreams of love and success, well, not success so much as survival,” Theo said. “Kind of like today.”

Chava nodded, “Thanks.” She liked that Theo included her, even if the book sounded kind of sad. 

Inside the front cover, Theo had slipped his family’s one cell phone number with a note, Call any time. 

Theo used to enjoy the quiet of the library. No more. Now, advertising covered the place. There were even two large billboards outside, one facing West 5th Street that was ten by twenty-five feet and the other facing South Grand Avenue measuring a massive twelve by forty-eight feet. The larger billboard advertised the Governet. The message was:

The Internet is Dead; Long Live the Governet! 

with a picture of an ax coming down on an old computer that represented the Internet and a new, shiny computer growing out of a purple poppy that represented the Governet. 

The smaller billboard recruited for the Truancy Squad:

We Need You to Control Yourselves

Join the Truancy Squad!

The text was centered and featured pictures of young men and women dressed in military camouflage with a big “Truancy Squad” logo over their chests, shotguns over their shoulders and on the right, a male and female squad member arresting a dangerous looking young man of indeterminate background. He could have been Muslim or Mexican or some other dangerous race. He wasn’t white. As if the billboard weren’t disturbing enough, the man being arrested looked a lot like Theo, except shorter. No matter that the population of the state was majority non-white, wealthy whites ran Angeltown like his dad said was done in South Africa and Angola for years.  

Advertising drones would also buzz around the library and central Angeltown with banners streaming behind them with messages like “Control your own drone for the Truancy Squad”, “Czar World: Family Fun!” and “Nanomed: Drugs for Complaints You didn’t Know you Had.” Theo didn’t see many advertising drones in his impoverished neighborhood, only police drones with their weaponry and stun capabilities.  

The inside of the library was also replete with ads, and the one that made Theo laugh and cringe was an ad for the “Cock Asian Supremacy” restaurant chain. What were they thinking?  

Theo wasn’t athletic, but he stood taller than his friends, so they always invited him to play basketball at night. The city was too hot to play at other times. Besides, he always had interesting stories to share about history and news about Belmont High, and people liked to have him around. 

One player razzed Theo. “Hey Mr. Triple AAA, too bad you can’t score on the court like in school.” 

“Or with the girls, am I right?” said another. 

“Score in basketball, no, with the girls?” Theo said, “no comment.”

They laughed at his response.  

I’ve got more important things to think about than relationships, he thought. 

He went to play with Francis, who wasn’t tall, but could dribble and could pass. He liked Francis on his team because Theo always got open shots when Francis got him the ball, though he usually missed. 

Theo never missed an opportunity to agitate for his causes, so he started talking about the truancy squad and treatment of people in their neighborhood. The State Auto-Defense Force, SADF, never came around to courts in Angel Heights; they thought that local kids would kill each other playing ball, and the powers in Rampart and Saint Bernard were fine with that. But the courts were a time to play ball and get together, not shoot each other. Besides, only the police could afford to have guns any more after the SADF confiscated them from the poor neighborhoods. 

Theo asked the players while passing the ball, “How are your brothers and sisters doing in their classes?” and they started to share their stories.

One local kid from North Mexico told the group that his sister missed school when she fell and broke her arm, and the Truancy Squad knocked down their door and took her off to prison for missing class.

Another kid stopped dribbling and said, “I was taking my brother to visit our dad in the hospital and the Truancy Squad came and took him away for failing some pinche tests.”

This occurred all around Angeltown, kids being sent to truancy prison because they were missing school, failing tests, and not meeting arbitrary education standards set by the Insiders. 

On the way home, Francis confided in Theo what he didn’t feel comfortable sharing with the group. “My brother Andy was in a wheelchair, really sick you know, and he couldn’t do the assigned homework. They took him away, Theo, and we’re not allowed to visit.” He held back his tears. “You should have seen him try to pick up the pen or press on the tablet to do his homework. His hands are shriveled up so badly, he can’t even open his fingers,” explained teary eyed Francis. “They didn’t care; they put Andy in prison.” 

“That’s inhumane. We’ve got to have a rally, Francis, for people like your brother and all the brothers and sisters arrested sent away for missing class and failing their tests.” Theo looked up in thought. “Let’s make a handout and get started.”    

Francis sniffed in some mucus and wiped it on his t-shirt. “I know where we can get a flyer copied. We’ll make it simple and leave no trace back to us.” They designed a third-of-a-page handout, easy to fold and easy to hide. It would contain no personal information, just a time and date for the walkout the following spring before final testing for the year: 

No truth, no truancy, no testing!

Student walk out, 8 AM, May 14, 2053.  Meet at the Central Library.

Theo copied them at one of the last organized hold-outs of socialism in Angeltown, the Emma Goldman Underground Copy Center (EGUCC) in downtown that one of his school-mate’s uncles worked at. The copy center was hidden in the basement of an abandoned “Uptown Dresses” store. If you wanted to get in, you had to have the combination to open the metal gate into the atrium. Theo’s friend Javier gave the code to him. And once inside, you had to hit a buzzer, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. Then, you held up an official business card to the camera that was given to you with the password printed on it in a one of a kind EGUCC font. It read: “The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.” That Goldman quote would confuse most of the SADF if you were caught with the card; they wouldn’t get the sarcasm. 

The door opened with a buzzing sound. Theo went inside and down a narrow wooden staircase into the dark and windowless basement that housed the copy center. They used an old Midstar 37 that had dozens of parts replaced over the years. 

“Theo!” said Uncle Caesar. Caesar was all business. “Javier said you had something to copy. You have the paper?” 

Theo gave him the two reams of paper he had commandeered from the Central Library using his bag and help from a friend. 

The copies were free if you brought your own paper and you were willing to spread other posters they printed around Angeltown. They would otherwise cost fifty cents a copy, still a bargain in the 2050s. 

“We need all of this copied, three notes per page,” said Theo in a serious voice. “And you can cut them for us, right?” 

“Sure. And you have to put up a few of these fliers,” said Caesar, who gave him a stack of posters for an outdoor concert at Beautiful View Park. The SADF would arrest you if you called it Buena Vista Park. 

Join us for a celebration of local music and life, Saturday at Beautiful View Park. Paine’s Pallbearers are headlining an acoustic set.   

Theo looked at the flyer. Cool, Paine’s Pall Bearers! Great lyrics,he thought. He sang to himself and tapped his foot.

Be friendly, they beat you

Be nice, they beat you

Surrender, they beat you 

Run, they beat you

You can’t change, the color of your skin! 

Theo and Francis used word of mouth and handed the flyers directly to students after getting their commitment join the rally. Each student would pass two fliers on and get them to pass two on and so forth. Theo did the math and shared the results with Francis. “If we share flyers with ten people and they share it with two people each, we will be out of flyers after six exchanges.”

“Let’s make sure they don’t share the information with any members of the Patrioteers Club or with any adults,” said Francis. 

Theo nodded. He knew that if they got caught, Truancy Prison, with its solitary confinement and deprivations, would be the least of their problems. So they gave flyers only to trusted allies and let them use their judgement.     

Theo used his time tutoring to test the water, and if it seemed safe, he gave the students a sales pitch about the walkout. “Hey Chin, a few students and I are going to have a rally about the tests and Truancy Prison. Why don’t you join us? It could be fun; you can even make a speech if you want.” Theo reached out with a flyer. 

“No thank you,” Chin said, refusing the handout. “Why don’t you just announce this online?” 

“And have the Governet track us?” He held the notice up for Chin to take. “They can’t track paper back to you. And hey,” he nudged his classmate, “I know that some of the kids from our math class will be there, like Nancy.” Chin’s face turned red, and he took a flyer. Theo gave him three more and said, “Pass it on, but don’t tell any adult. You promise?”  

Chin raised his right hand. “Promise.”      

Chin’s cousin, Wei, spent over a month in prison and the guards released him once they realized he hadn’t missed class, that it had been a computer error that lead to Wei’s arrest. 

He shared his story with Chin and Theo “They don’t give you hardly any food, a pile of gruel every morning and a potato at night, without even salt on it. Some of the guards on the night shift would play loud music with lots of guitars and screaming. They would run down the halls and bang on the metal bars of the cells to the rhythm of the songs to keep us awake. If you complained, they put in the hall and forced you to stand on one leg with your arms out for maybe thirty minutes. Some of us got to work, the lucky ones.”

Truants who worked in prison had long hours making signs in English to replace Spanish named locations, sewing jackets for the State Auto-Defense Forces, packaging household goods to be shipped to Saint Bernard where the Insiders lived, and other tasks. They worked twelve to sixteen hours a day and were paid one piece per hour. They were fortunate to get that. 

These stories were shared by other students not long after the truancy prison system opened. No one shared the stories with administration or teachers anymore because they were complicit and got bonuses if they sent enough kids to prison. Theo got eleven trustworthy allies to become recruiters as he walked them home. These students were desperate, and the rally sold itself even if the risk was prison. 

Theo’s parents worked late, mom at the college and dad in the Angeltown Sanitation Division, what was left of the department, and didn’t get back until around 8 PM. That gave him plenty of time after school to spend with his friends, go to the library if he wanted, and work on his homework and housework. Theo often had friends over to review their school assignments, and though he hated math, the repetition and practice made him a decent student. 

“Theo,” Mrs. Charles said, “again you surprised me by outscoring Sally here, who has always been so good at math.” Theo knew the trick to scoring well on tests, after putting in the hard work, was to stay relaxed and breathe.

Theo really excelled in writing; he always could write what the teacher wanted. He knew telling teachers what they wanted to hear was best. But he didn’t have to pander like some. He used his wits:

The object of school is to make sure that the students succeed in what the leaders want them to be good at, Theo once wrote in an essay on school and leadership. The teacher didn’t realize that Theo meant his essay as a criticism. And the teacher loved him for his writing. Irony is dead.  

One Saturday while sitting underneath the staircase between the 2nd and 3rd floor, his favorite spot in the library, Chava, the girl with the purple hair, came by. She didn’t care about AAAs. Her goal was to not be expelled.  

“Hey Theo, reading another crime history?” she asked as she sat down across from him.

He looked up. “Oh, yeah, I’m reading scary stories by this author named King. It’s interesting, and rare. He also has one story about prison break that is impossible to find. So of course, I want to read it.” He stopped himself. “How’s the rating?” he asked, meaning her student rating. 

“A solid C, thanks to you.” 

Theo smiled. “Well, as you say, you did the hard work. Any assignment you want to show me?” 

“Well,” she said, “my teacher gave us this essay to write on ‘what makes a good education.’ I think they want a specific answer, but I don’t know what.” 

“You’re right. Hold on.” He pulled a round carbon composite disk out of his pocket that measured two centimeters in diameter and two millimeters thick. Theo put it onto his tablet. He clicked a couple of buttons then hit copy. He picked up the disk and gave it to Chava. She looked at him quizzically. “It’s a copy of my answer to that same question I had last year,” he said. “The teachers reuse the questions because it isn’t worth the effort for them to do anything original and be questioned by the Czar’s Office of Education. Last year, Mrs. Greene asked students to write about their future dreams, and no one has seen her since.” 

“Oh, no!” She cringed and spoke more softly. “So, that wasn’t an approved topic?”

Theo shook his head. “No.”

Chava placed the disc in her front shirt pocket and buttoned it, as if hiding some secret code. “Thanks. How do you know all this?”  

“I pay attention,” he said, tapping his forehead twice with his index finger. “Just remember to change the wording, put in a couple of new ideas, and you will maintain that C you are striving for,” Theo said, half jesting. 

Chava smiled. “Gotta get home. My mom is waiting for dinner,” she explained. 

“How is your mom doing?”  

“Well, you know.” Chava didn’t want to think about her mom’s cancer. 

“Hey, it’s good you can be there for her.” Theo wasn’t sure the right time was right, but he gave Chava a flyer to the walkout. “We’re having a rally, no big deal if you can’t go, but…” He grinned. “Keep it between us students, or it could be big trouble…okay?”

Chava gave him a quick hug. “Sure.” She folded the flyer and put it in her pocket with

the disk containing the essay. “Thanks again!” She waved goodbye and started off.                                                                                        

Four forcemen of Truancy Squad 8 stood outside a single-wide trailer in a Venice, CA mobile-home park. They were assigned to apprehend a fifteen-year-old girl who had missed classes all week without a call or a notice to her school. She was a danger to society and a bad example to all the law-abiding citizens of Angeltown. 

The squad leader pounded on the door. “On the orders of the Office of the Czar of   Education, we demand you open the door and let us in.” 

No one answered. He looked at the warrant while the other forcemen drew their automatic weapons. “We are here to arrest a Whitney Lopez on the charge of “Failure to learn in the first degree.” We demand you come out with your hands up!”  

Still no answer. The commander stood back and drew his Razer XD pistol with five fifty-caliber armor piercing rounds, enough to penetrate doors and sides of buildings. “I will give you to the count of ten to turn yourself in. Ten, nine, eight…” He counted as the forcemen clicked off their guns’ safeties and prepared to fire. “… three, two, one.” They commenced firing. By the time they were done, over 80 rounds had struck and penetrated the side of the trailer, centered around the doors and the windows. “Rex, Wilson, get inside and look around,” the commander ordered.

They ran inside the trailer and searched. 

An old man with a scrunched-up apple-doll face came out of his trailer next door. “Sir!”  he yelled to the commander. “Them folks left a week ago. I don’t think they be coming back. Too bad, I really like them, and the wife made a mean mole sauce.”

The commander stepped forward to address him. “Do you know where they may have gone?”

He scratched his protruding chin. “I don’t know. I woke one mornin’ and they weren’t there. I figur’ they went back to North Mexico, but they didn’t tell me nothin’. It was like they were running from something.”

Rex and Wilson came out of the trailer. “There’s no one here, Commander,” said Rex.

“I reckin’ not,” the commander said.