Short Stories: Odious

 

There is an oft quoted analogy of a frog in a pot of hot water commonly used in fiction and non-fiction alike to describe the tacit acceptance of mounting danger until it is too late. His back unwinding on icy steel bench of the police station Mike could wondered when exactly his own internal thermometer had failed him so completely.

“Hey kid you good with this?” The Desk Sargent asked. Mike followed his jutting thumb to the wall display which crackled just past his cell. On it a vocally chipper news reporter recounted the events surrounding his arrest with cogent alarm.

Mike rolled to the side and groaned into the wall. “Yeah its fine.”

The Desk Sargent watched the fragile figure with intense curiosity. He now knew to be Michael Collins of Sam’s Cross, South Carolina, age twenty-two born March 3rd, 2032. He knew Michael, Mike to his friends, had been arrested for Disrupting the Peace along with the newly minted charge of Engaging in Seditious Acts. What he did not know was what Mike thought of all this. At sixty-two and on the verge of retirement he had begun to wonder at the sort of things people thought about when they were in that cell, about how they got there.

“Kid, what did you do?” The sound of his own voice startled them both.

“I am sure its saved out in a file already, it’s on the news man, I broke the new Sedition Law.”

“Yeah I know.” He looked back to the file, largely blank the few snippets of language mirrored those from the news. The sight of another naive kid dragged in under the Sedition Law knocked his stomach off kilter. There was something disturbing about these cases he thought. “I am just curious what you did.”

Mike rolled upright on the narrow bench, his fists wrapped around its polished frame. “I was stupid okay.”

“Come on, humor me.” The Desk Sargent pressed. “I am curious.”

“Okay fine, I didn’t like the new laws. I mean we have people getting deported, people getting sent to prison for nothing at all. You know you can’t even buy an uncensored version of Mark Twain or Karl Marx anymore? Next month they start the searches…it’s just too much.” Mike spoke with the righteous fury that characterizes youth and passion in equal measure.

The Desk Sargent having heard this specific tone a lot over the years was forced to remind himself that naivety and fallibility we not always one in the same.  “And with this brilliant insight you did…what? He asked.

“I protested, I got copies of the books and put them online, I wrote a couple articles. That’s it.” Mike answered exhausted.

The Desk Sargent stifled a laugh. “Son, you were in a SWAT raid.”

“Yeah…I know.” Mike’s head fell into his hands, “I was just trying to interview to this girl who claimed her family had been a part of an ethnic search before they were Congressionally approved. I met her at her brother’s house, turned out he was dealing or a subversive or something. I don’t know, I just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The Desk Sargent’s grin faded, “You’re a journalist? Did you tell the arresting officer this?”

“Was a journalist. Our Press Credentials got revoked two months ago, full week after I was hired.” Mike kicked the ground of the empty cell. He hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, isolation seemed safer.

“Why?”

“For failing to comply with the Official Secrets Act.” Mike said.

The Desk Sargent studied him then walked to coffee pot station along the wall. The antiquated machine clicked to life with a hiss as a stream of black coffee poured out into the cup. “How did we get here kid?”

“What?” Mike cocked his head to the side shocked.

The Desk Sargent stared into the coffee cup. “I am serious how do you think we got to this point? Why were you arrested tonight really?”

“Tih” Mike’s tongue clicked against his teeth in frustration as he weighed his thoughts. “Depends on who you ask, biased media and tyrannical bureaucracy, partisan politics and authoritarian leaders, the alt right and the progressive left. In the end it doesn’t matter, here we are.” He pat the steal bench of his jail cell to drive his point home.

The Desk Sargent crossed the room to his cell wall, he looked at the young man through the bars. Coffee in hand he felt the heat of it singe his fingertips through the thin paper cup. “You know I never thought it was anything that bad. I am not saying you’re wrong, I just think people weren’t paying attention. They got so caught up in bullshit, in drama of it all, in hearing lies and not even caring if they were true that they when it came time to do something they missed out on the bigger picture. And they were so angry, you can’t imagine how much hatred there was.” He concluded as he sat the cup between the steel bars.

Mike snagged the cup triumphantly. “So they started electing authoritarians and extremists to what…be honest about it? And back then? Look around man, people are locking up journalists that don’t play nice and activists that take the wrong stand. You know a journalist was fired for pointing out a politician wouldn’t come on her show. You know what her colleagues did? They blamed her for not siding with him on the issues, for supporting an opposing view. As if that’s the job of a journalist, to shill for the party! They are a bunch of extremists.”

“Kid people never really understand when they are an extremist. To them they are the one that’s being rational in an irrational world. They just continue on, moving forward as if nothing’s changed. They don’t realize what they are really doing or how things differ from the way they might see it.”

“So you are saying all the people that support this, they don’t think its extreme they just think it’s what needs to be done for the greater good.”

“A lot of them yeah. We do what people always do when we find ourselves in a situation, we make up our mind if something is okay or not and then we stick to it. When people are scared and lied to and then someone said you have to be okay with this horrible thing I am going to do but I can solve your problems it is tempting. Once they convince themselves they are okay with that horrible thing, the next one is easier to swallow, and so on and so one. I mean look at yourself, you broke the law, you’re in jail, pretty much 50% of this country would readily agree you’re a threat to our society. That’s why you’re in jail right now.”

Mike slammed his fist down. “Excuse me? I went to do an interview; I had press credentials on me, what law really was I trying to break and how is that worse than the government searching houses? That’s the real crime here, I can’t wait to write an article about THIS.”

The Desk Sargent chuckled, “I got to say people don’t usually confess to sedition so quickly, let alone make it clear they plan to continue, so thanks for making it easy kid. I just hope whenever you end up they can make you see the truth. It’s a small price to pay to make America safe again, especially if you have nothing to hide.”

Mike rolled back to the wall to plan his next move, he just hoped Connelly could keep his end of the bargain. The next phase of this would be hell.

 

Odious: arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance: hateful 

Author’s Note: Day 6/365 down. In regards to this post I really wanted to look at a future where all the doomsday and regimes are proven right. How would that world feel, what room might you find yourself in and how might the conversations go? Most importantly how might history repeat itself. The character of Michael Collins was directly inspired by the real life Michael Collins, a leading figure in the fight for Irish independence throughout the 20th Century.