From the 'National Circle News,' a Day In the (Future) Life

It is a dark day in the former United States. Vacant, lifeless poles, their cables clanging, where brilliant stars and stripes danced before. The children in straight, gray lines, heads hung low, the look of hope lost in their eyes. The future is dark.

Churches sit vacant and in disrepair. New government agencies will soon move in and occupy the hallowed grounds where faithful used to gather. They were gone now. No one knew where. There were whispers, but no one really knew for sure.

But the media is alive with the power of Oneness. The National Circle News, the only newspaper in the country, tells of the efficiencies in systems and workers now, and the wholeness of One country, One circle, One unified nation under all. Workers wear white to symbolize the fresh new start in this more efficient, more streamline, more fair government. It is a government about the people, around the people, and in the people.

Crosses replaced with the New Circle, symbolizing unity and wholeness, after so many years of intolerance, selfishness, and greed. The Nation has a new creed, “Let us never again be divided by intolerance, unfairness, or greed.”

Molly pauses to remember the last great stand before so much changed. They were told there would be change. They had risen to fight. But now Molly would fight, alone, because her brothers and sisters in arms, her family and friends were gone, silenced forever. There was no one to fight. Molly fought tears as she glanced toward the barren ground where a large, arched structure stood only years ago. It was torn down, and like the crosses on the churches, it was replaced with a large sculpture of a circle–the circle of Oneness.

Molly took a breath and held it to try to hold back the tears that stung as she walked through the sea of white. She gazed for just a moment so as not to be caught remembering. She gasped to see a familiar face, and eyes that still remembered. It was hard to see faces when everyone looked the same.

“Hannah, is that…is that you?”

Both women knew that cameras everywhere would catch their exchange so they walked side by side, PDA’s in position, to look as if they were part of the architectural planners working on the newest “O” sculpture.

“Yes, I remember you, Molly,” Hannah replied before Molly could even ask the question burning in her soul. “I remember the patriots, the bullhorns, the rain and cold that we shivered to, and the hope that was still in our hearts…so long ago.”

The tears were welling up now with the flood of memories of the days of fighting together for a concept so hushed now it didn’t seem that one could have ever really lived it…a concept called simply, “freedom.”

“Do we know, will we ever know Molly, I have to know…who killed the Tea Party?”

Molly pursed her lips. She hated having to tell this part. She knew what Hannah was asking.

Hannah rushed her response. “Was it the Unions? Did they just take over after Card Check and kill the small businesses and the remainder of the free economy?”

Molly shook her head, still wishing there was another way to spare her friend the pain of knowing the truth.

“Was it a liberal infiltration? I remember the rumors of them disrupting our rallies, is that what happened?”

Molly looked down.

“Was it a foreign invasion? Another country coming in to divide and conquer the freedom fighters?”

Molly stopped. Hannah’s face was flaming red with anticipation of understanding what had ended all the hope for freedom that was born right here, on the former Arch Grounds, only years before. Years before the “change” was delivered, one segment of the economy, at a time, until businesses crashed, churches closed, families crumbled in despair, and the One came in and made the change promised.

“Hannah, it wasn’t the liberals. It wasn’t the unions, or the race baiters, or the mainstream media. It wasn’t lawyers or a foreign government. Hannah…”

The words choked still as she said them…”it was us.”

Hannah looked like she might fall, as her jaw dropped to the ground and Molly signaled for Hannah to keep walking so that the cameras didn’t alert the Officials.

For clarity, in her bravest voice, she repeated the words that pierced her old friend’s heart: “It was us.”

Remember that while the media snapped at our heels, the liberals made accusations, and the politicians scrambled for cover, we fought on? Well, then, in our own sin, we took the bait that the Others always knew we would. We turned on our own. Remember, Hannah? Remember when turned on our own?

The glassy redness in Hannah’s eyes told every tear of her heart. “I do.” Like a slideshow, the memories of the happiness and hope and freedom danced in her mind for a moment. She remembered the warnings of her parents, the sweet history books, and her Bible, telling her to be careful about turning on her own. She remembered how sure she felt that certain groups were doing things wrong, threatening the movement! She remembered being so angry with the Freedom Fighters that she actually leaked information to the Others. She remembered the day that the Patriots went back into their homes, to their drugs of television, food, football, and music, to cover the pain of knowing they could have saved a country on the verge of disaster, and didn’t. She remembered the day there were no more rallies, the day she woke up to find One page displayed available on the internet, One radio, and One tv netork all displaying the same information about going to the nearest ballot box to be measured for white uniforms. She remembered the day the buildings and billboards were painted white with a large “O” for purposes of “oneness”. She looked back now surprised that it didn’t happen the way she thought it would. It was disturbingly clean and easy. There was no visible blood shed; only policy, then whiteness, and vanishing.

She remembered the way it all changed. She wanted to fight now! She wanted to kill the person or thing who had done this. But there were no weapons, no information, no relationships now. She had nothing to show for the fight she had fought. She had stopped fighting, turned on her fellow patriots, and now all she had was a memory of what she had before, and the dreams of what could have been.

The worse part of all was that the offender, the real offender, was closer than she ever knew. The one who killed freedom was was her, and nothing would ever change that now.