Chapter Twenty-Five: Back to Africa by Tina Semanas Underneath an orange festooned African headdress and colorful tribal tattoos gleamed a smiling Octavia Hulambu. She still couldn’t believe it, “Dr. Gladstone was actually dead?” Octavia’s mind was spinning. Sitting at her desk in the lush office on the campus of Smith College, Octavia dialed a familiar number on the desk speaker pad, “Hello, can you forward me to Roxanne?” Answering the call on the other end was a militat female assistant in the Revolutionary Studies department of Scripps College. She replied, “I’m sorry, Professor Clement is commanding her class right now. She only has a few minutes left, she can’t be bothered, unless of course, you would like me to interrupt and pull her away from her instruction?” “No, I wouldn’t want you to do that!” Octavia smiled enjoying the eagerness of the young woman’s blind dedication to her leader, “Oh, no, no, no...just tell her Octavia Hulambu called. Please inform her that the Chairman of the Doyenne Council has placed herself on permanent leave from her duties and it is time for us to begin ‘Operation October.’ Have her call me immediately.” Octavia hung up the pad with unrestrained glee. Shaking her head and humming with delight, she began singing a short refrain of, “Ding-dong the witch is dead! The wicked witch...that witch is dead!” Laughing to herself she said, “I still can’t believe it?” Unlocking the center drawer of her desk file cabinet Octavia pulled out a large document with the Doyenne Council’s emblem of 5 turtle doves on the front and a red ink “Classified” stamped diagonally over it. The booklet quickly fell open to a dog-eared section titled “Replacement Protocol.” Octavia put on a pair of cat-framed glasses and began to slowly read out loud drinking in each word, sound and syllable : “In the case of an unexpected death or termination of the acting Chairman of the Council, the Second Sister shall contiguously take on the full responsibilities of the acting Chairman. The Second Sister must then choose one of the remaining sisters as her Second…” “Hmmm,” Octavia sat back, chewed on her pen and wondered, “That means that I am now acting Chairman...I am the head of the state...the new leader of the people...I am it!” Octavia moved her hand down to a section of the page that was already underlined in red with a hand scribbled note on the side margin, ‘Operation October begins here, Roxanne Clement as second…’. Octavia continued reading: “If the new Chairman believes it is in the best interest of the state at the time, she may implement ‘Martial Law’ which gives her full legislative and military authority. The duration of that decree is directly set by the decision of the new Chairman with the help of the remaining members of the Doyenne Conclave.” Tapping on the page with her index finger she re-read it outloud again, “full legislative and military authority...set by the new Chairman...” The pad on her desk began to buzz. She answered, “Hello, this is Octavia.” “Yes, I have Roxanne Clement on the other end.” Octavia took off her glasses and leaned back on her chair as she said, “Well Roxanne, are you ready for ‘Operation October’ to begin? The b - - - - is dead, it is time to begin fashioning the country the way we have been dreaming and planning for so long, it is time for Revolution!” In a throaty voice, obviously still trying to catch her breath, Roxanne Clement, Professor of Revolutionary Change, replied, “Octavia, when my assistant just relayed your subtle hint that Dr. Gladstone died, I thought it was a joke? But I haven’t heard from her for a few days, and you know how controlling and paranoid that woman has become, I knew something tremendous must be astir! Now the path has been cleared and I know you are the one who has been ready for years to step through this unprecedented doorway of history. Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Hulambu...It is your time, and the people’s time. The winds of Revolution are upon us.” Octavia smugly replied, “Yes, yes, finally! We have overcome!” Standing up to stretch and filling her lungs with fresh air, Octavia Hulambu felt inspired, “Roxanne, we are the new agents to bring that change! We must first dismantle the European stronghold this country has been under for the last 3 millennium. Dr. Gladstone and her poisoned Caucasian blood has once and for all been spilled, the fates have received her sacrifice, the guilt of her people must die and stay buried with her...allowing for us...the innocent...those born under bondage... to rise from the ashes like a Phoenix.” Roxanne grunted in approval on the other end, “That’s right…” Octavia was impassioned, “Roxanne, it is time to implement Operation October, to finally start the real revolution for all people of color! I have trained and instructed my staff from Smith College to be prepared for this moment. They will immediately be placed in all the strategic positions of the State’s Administrative positions of power, starting on the east coast; and I trust your people from Scripps is ready to begin on the west coast as well?” “Yes they are!” An excited, fanatical, Roxanne replied. Sitting back down, Octavia said, “I suggest we convene in the dead witch’s old headquarters at Oberlin as soon as possible. We must shut down all the presently active state organs of power, and we need to set up the new directives of the Revolution under our leadership. I want you to first notify the remaining members - Dr. Sorenson and Ara Dias - that the Doyenne Council has been dismantled forthwith, and then meet me in Ohio. Roxanne, you and I are the law now…” ————————————————————- The Tergament force that was on sight to witness the death of Dr. Gladstone at the lighthouse quickly took Ara, Athan and Drew into custody waiting for further instruction from their superiors. Locked in a local Tergament holding tank, the three were each isolated in small individual cells left wondering to themselves about their fate. Ara knew her only hope to survive after the death of Dr. Gladstone was for the other Sisters to still consider her as an equal member with full rights and authority of the Doyenne Conclave. There was no reason the other three should have any personal grievances against her? Staring at the gray concrete wall, Ara shut her eyes tight allowing one small tear to escape as she said to herself - - “I miss my mom!” In the next cell over, Drew was lying on the rock hard cot in his cell. He was spiralling down into inky black pools of depression fighting vivid flashbacks of the past year, all starting with the memory of a harmless backyard football game resulting in the crushed skull of the mother he loved. Horrific visions flashed: a genderless creature named Bee trying to get him to reshape his body into a fellow monster, living the life of a zombie in the Rivet factory, and barely escaping launched military rockets that decimated the Last Resistance post in Dayton. Despair was his bedfellow, whispering poisonous threats of exile, promising only a future of slavery. The grand feminist plan to snuff out the last vestiges of male dignity seemed all but certain. Drew knew he was a dead man walking. And the third member of the captive party, Athan Stone, was left stewing over his own dark thoughts. His mind was fixed on one thing, one person, one face, one heart: Beck Paris. Athan voiced a somber vow, “I will do everything within my power to show Beck how much I love her. If and when I get out of here I will not let any fascist feminine regime keep me from spending the rest of my life with my best friend...Beck...my soul mate.” Looking for a way out, he tugged at the steel door, but it was not budging. Was Beck O.K.? He wanted to be with her, he wanted to be the one to nurse her back to health - - but here he was, locked in some Tergament hell hole. Falling to his knees Athan clasped his hands and cried out in the only way he knew how, “Dear God, I know I have seldom recognized your existence, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know you are good. Please God...more specifically, Jesus Christ... come and help me...and... help Beck. Keep her alive. Keep me alive. Only you can save any of us now. I place my life into your hands.” Athan unclasped his hands, letting go. A calm washed over him and a distant memory poured strength into his drained soul, “Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Rest. ————————————-- Rumors, like flood water finding cracks, could not be contained. News of Dr. Gladstone’s death found its curious way between the chattering lips of friends, break room banter of co-workers, and even to the night time whisperings behind locked doors of anxious families. The mounting national realization that Dr. Gladstone was dead meant that the leader, the icon of female virtue, was no longer able to inspire and compel. Even though the glass ceiling of female leadership had been shattered for many decades, the one female that could actually lead the nation forward was shattered herself. Simone Gladstone, found dead. For the regular citizen that meant her words could no longer soothe the emotional wounds of the people, no more motherly advice from the one woman that daily told individual citizens over the airways how to feel about themselves and their country, and no more champion of feminist ideology to lean on. Dr. Gladstone had become the sole nurturing voice speaking for all of the people. Now she was no more. The news of her death caused a strange ripple effect throughout the country. Industry, commerce, manufacturing, entertainment all stopped. People went home to wait, waiting for a new national mother figure to emerge, the people needed to be told what to do? Watching their projection screens, the shell-shocked nation waited to hear from The Sisters. But there was only a fearful silence. For two whole days every station ran a blank black screen. Timid and scared people sat at home on their couches stunned and silent. Doors were locked. Streets empty. It was more than national mourning, it was a collective dread. No one knew what the future held. A society with no god, no guiding light, carries dread heavy. But then, like a bolt from the blue, Octavia Hulambu, the Second Sister, went live. Her image and voice displayed large on every station, every flat pad small screen, every P.A. System on every public street as she voiced her first words as the nation’s new leader: “People of the State, as you know, our grand leader, Dr. Simone Gladstone has passed away and along with her the fragile tottering government she helped build. It has finally and catastrophically fallen...only rubble and ruin remains. The reigns of power have been legally handed over to me and it is time for a new nation to be formed from the broken bricks and twisted rebar left by her failed system of governing. The Sisters as they were once configured, are no more.” All those watching, virtually the whole nation, couldn’t pull their eyes away; not only was Octavia a masterful orator, but her words shook every person down to their primal core. She continued, “It is time for a new kind of people to emerge from the shackles of the bondslave and the oppressed. People of color, Arise! The notion that feminism alone can lead you to the promised land has proven itself a fanciful lie, a tale told by fools, a tower built on sand. The very foundation laid by the Doyenne Council has been tainted with the poison of white utopian principles, leaning on the cold dead stones of reason and science, framed by the bankrupt constraints of Western thought.” “But this child of the slave cries, ‘No more!’ We must call forth the ancient bedrock of ‘Blood, Passion and Color’, we must get back to our roots, a new spirit must be birthed from the old animal spirit that has lain dormant for millennium under the soil of the earth - - it is time for the full spectrum of the ancient tribes to emerge, no longer washed out by the racial bleach of Europe. We must be called back to Gaia, our mother, dance near her life-giving fires, marching to the beat of the tribal drum, forming a new self as our ancestors once did under the same moon and stars that shines on us today.” Octavia held up her hands and looked fiercely into the camera: “Today, the call for ‘Blood, Passion and Color’ will guide all of us.” Athan could hear the pulsating and powerful orations of Octavia’s rhetoric echoing down the stone walls of the holding cells. Ara wondered what this meant for her? Everywhere you went, Octavia’s compelling visage could be seen blazing under the ornamented headdress of her African tribal pride. “A new society of Color starts today.” She continued, “which entails three initial decrees:
Octavia sat down and in a motherly tone said, “Years of inequity will be turned back, the slave will become the master, the master the slave. 'The Spectrum' society begins today! All wrongs will be righted, retributive equity for the marginalized. Finally, a freedom that has never been experienced before.” —————————————————-- Octavia Hulambu proved better and stricter than her word. The old Sisters’ state was completely disassembled. In it’s place The Spectrum took over every vestige and organ of power. White women of European descent all over the country were beginning to feel the full force of the cleansing they once exacted on others. Xenon green was not just meant for men anymore. DNA stations were set up in every cleansing factory across the country. The male worker drones found with a DNA of racial color were set free. But the ravages of Xenon poisoning left most of them to wander - - senseless millions with no ability to function resorted to sleeping on streets, begging for food, families who forgot them, nameless strays left to die. Chaos was the new society’s norm, and death became the handmaiden of the mindless. As for Ara and Drew, after three weeks of incarceration and isolation, Octavia Hulambu was quick to forgive their association with the death of Dr. Gladstone. In fact she felt a sense of obligation and pity for the 12 year old Ara Dias - - she was too young to be caught up in the political claws of the dreadful Gladstone woman. Before both her and Drew were released with a large monetary compensation for her time on the Doyenne Council, they still had to be checked by the DNA scanner to make sure they passed Spectrum’s proper blood percentages. After submitting a sample of blood, both of their results revealed a minimal amount of the European stain. 65 percent Argentinian origins, 20 percent Austrailian and faint readings of German and Polish blood meant they were to be set free. Tattooed with the official Spectrum Seal - a rainbow triangle prism on their left forearm - they were given complete clemency and a new lease on life. Athan faced a darker future. While preparing for his reading, a “Color” officer, replacing the old Tergament guard, stepped up to draw his blood. Inserting Athan’s sample into the scanner, a 95 percent European reading was his result; he was found to be guilty, a direct descendant of British and Irish ancestry. That meant certain exile, he was to be ostracized from the general public, a racial pariah. As he lingered in his cell, Ara and Drew came daily to speak to him through the small slit in the steel door. He was told he had three days left before he was to be shipped out to Lawrenceburg, the closest cleansing facility in the Midwest. The day before his deportment, the Color officer opened Athan’s door and handcuffed his hands, “Prisoner Stone, follow me” the guard commanded. Winding through the dark passageways of the holding cells, Athan was met by Ara and Drew. “We have asked Octavia for a special session with you in one of the larger padded meeting rooms. She agreed, but for only and hour. Your blood count of 95 has made you a marked man - but because all three of us had helped bring down Gladstone, she offered you this single hour.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before entering the room, the guard unlocked his handcuffs and opened the door to the meeting room. Inside waiting for Athan was a host of familiar friendly faces: Don, Phen, Jonathan and in the back sitting was a woman in a wheelchair. He knew that face, her smile always melted him...it was Beck. There she sat sporting a new hair color of chestnut brown, but she couldn’t disguise those brilliant blue eyes! Running over to her he bent down giving her a soft embrace. “Are you O.k.?” Her arms grabbed tight around his shoulders, not wanting to let go. “Beck, will you forgive me for how harsh I was to you. You need to know I love you more than anything.” Athan was pleading with eyes swelling with tears. “Athan, I love you. And there is nothing to forgive you for. Just hold me.” Beck said with tears streaming as well. After giving Beck and Athan a few minutes to themselves, Don and the rest of the group joined them huddled in the corner for a brief conversation. Phen had his arms around Drew and Ara, and Jonathan pulled a large table for them all to sit around. Don began, “Athan, listen to me. Do you still have the small item I gave you before you left?” Grabbing in his front pant pocket he pulled out a single silver tube, “Yeah, here it is. What is it?” Don looked around and whispered, “If you pop the top of the cylinder, inside are two milky white Xenon blockers. Phen has a glass of water for you to swallow them down now. But do it subtly, cameras are everywhere.” Handing a glass of water to Athan, he quickly splashed down the two capsules with no effort. Swallowing the whole glass he made it seemed like it was simply thirst he needed to quench. Don continued, “Now those pills will stop any numbing effect, but you must act as if the drugs in the plant are causing you to lose all emotions and will-power. Samuel and Thomas are not here because they needed to bring batch two of the water blockers back to the bottling plant. The first batch was destroyed by the attendants.” Athan asked, “How did you all make it here without detection? And there is no way Beck passed the DNA testing?” Phen replied, “The new Spectrum Society considers all members of the Hocking Hills community as indigenous people of color. They visited the Rim and gave each of us a Prism stamp without needing to draw blood. Before they came in to check we made sure we all had a tribal look, that is why Beck is now a dark haired brunette!” Beck showed the tattoo on her forearm smiling, “Athan, I kind of like chestnut brown, in fact it is closer to my natural color.” “I love it!” Athan said. Don said, “Athan, we don’t have much time left, but once the people begin to drink the water with blocker solution you need to act. It will not be hard to overthrow the small contingent of guards with a whole army of awakened angry minds. I figure it will take two weeks for the new water to take effect, then you can easily lead a revolt. Can you hold out that long? Athan replied, “Absolutely. Can I talk to Beck alone?” Phen and Don both nodded, walking to the other end of the room with the others, leaving Athan and Beck to talk privately. “Beck, how are you feeling?” Athan kneeled down holding her hand. “I’m fine. Don says my body needs another month of rest before I can really start putting weight on my legs and pelvis. But that Nika woman is a miracle worker.” After kissing Athan’s forehead, she looked right into his eyes and asked, “Can you do this? Will you be O.k.? I honestly will not be able to make it without you.” Athan paused, and taking both of her hands in his he said, “Two weeks will be nothing compared to living a lifetime with you.” Leaning closer, he said softly but intently, “Beck, I have one question before I leave: Will you marry me again? Under the Rim? Having a real Christian wedding?” Waiting for an answer, she replied, “Yes, I will Athan... I so will! Yes, yes, yes!” Two Color guards entered the room, “Athan Stone’s time is up. Ara and Drew Dias you also must leave, the allotted time Octavia has given you here at the outpost has expired. Say your last goodbyes, Athan Stone is no longer considered a citizen of our new Society.” Each member in the group hugged him, and then left the room. Athan would not leave before he shared a final kiss with Beck. She didn’t want to let go. The guard walked in between them and then grabbing Athan by the arm, the guard pulled him out of the room and into the hallway. Turning Athan around to put the handcuffs back on his wrists he noticed a smile, “What are you so happy about Stone? You are being shipped off tomorrow...and you’re smiling? There must be something wrong with you?” Athan turned to him with an expression of pure joy, “I’m smiling because she said ‘Yes!’ Beck Paris said ‘Yes’!”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
August 2018
|