INTRODUCTION
Suffering is an illness caused by attachment. Self-discovery and
serenity are the cure and the path to Nirvana.
The Four Noble
Truths
From the teachings
of the Lord Buddha
Beth gripped
the bars of her holding cell wondering when their jailers would release them.
The Boston Police Department had a catch-and-release policy for non-violent offenders.
They just took names and subjected them to an uncomfortable night in jail
before letting them go. She was worried about her final exams, worried that she
needed to hit the books.
"Elizabeth
Lenard...Lenard."
The echo
off the metal walls distorted the sound, but it sounded enough like her name so
that she shouted, "here....HERE!"
"Don't
cooperate with those pigs," one of her more committed cellmates hissed, but Beth
ignored her.
"I'm
here," she shouted again.
She had
done her bit for the cause now it was time for her to return to her real life.
"Grab
your stuff, Lenard. We're releasing you."
A second
man in a suit stood behind the jailer. He quietly took her arm and guided her
down the long hallway. She avoided the eyes peering out from between the bars.
Their time will come soon enough, she thought, no need to feel guilty about an
early release.
They
stepped through a doorway into an enclosed courtyard where a black van stood waiting.
The jailer held back as the man in the suit pushed her to the back of the van.
"The
Emergency Court has found you guilty of sedition, Elizabeth," he said quietly. "You
need to come with us."
The Emergency
Court...sedition?
"There's
been a mistake. You have the wrong person," she said reasonably. "The police arrested
me last night during a student protest. I have not been to court. I'm telling
you, there's been a mistake; you need to..."
She
didn't get to finish. He slammed her against the back of the van, pulled her
arms behind, and snapped on a pair of handcuffs.
"There
are too many of you traitors in this town to have in-person trials. The court
tried you in absentia and found you guilty. The judge sentenced you to
national service for the duration of the emergency, and he gave us the right to
question you for 30 days. Next time, maybe you will think twice before turning
on your country."
"That's
ridiculous," Beth said breathlessly. "Didn't you ever hear of habeas corpus?
Let me out of these! The court can't try me in absentia, I'm right here. I have
the right to a lawyer and..."
He pushed
a ball gag into her mouth and opened the van door. Frantically, she turned back
towards the jail; the BPD jailer had already disappeared inside. A second man
wearing a blue FBI windbreaker appeared around the side.
"We need
to do a body search," the first agent told her. "It's routine."
Beth's
eyes widened over the gag. The only cops present were the two male FBI agents.
The second man was holding a large pair
of cutting shears that he used to cut off her clothes. She must have faded
during this process as the next thing she knew, she was sitting naked on her
haunches on the van's metal floor with her arms cuffed behind. The agent in the
FBI windbreaker pulled her arms back roughly and attached her cuffs to a snap-hook
hanging from the ceiling. Lifting her arms forced her off her haunches and onto
her knees. The first man crossed her ankles and strapped them together. She
heard the engine start through the fog that had descended over her mind.
"We have
a long ride ahead of us, Elizabeth. The court has assigned you to the FBI
interrogation site on P Street in Washington. It's one of the best; in 30 days
you will be begging us to take you to the caves.
"If you
cooperate during the trip, I'll change your position every so often. If you
don't, I'll keep you like this and add these."
He pulled
two metal clamps out of his pocket.
"They go
on your nipples. You won't believe how painful they are. The girls who have
tested them for me tell me that the pain is, well, very special. So, I advise
you not to piss me off."
She
looked down at the clamps and felt a wave of fear grip her stomach. It was just
a threat. He wouldn't really do that to her...would he? She didn't want to find
out.
"You're
going to have company, we have two other traitors to pick up on the way, but
the gag needs to stay on...regulations, you know."
She
didn't know.
He
climbed out and closed the door, leaving her bound in strappado in the dark.
She recovered slowly from the shock of begin cuffed, gagged, and stripped, moving
slowly through stages of disbelief, rage, self-pity, and finally acceptance. After
a while, she began to focus on other things to distract herself from her
situation. They were somewhere on the Massachusetts Turnpike, she guessed
trying to get her mind off the pain. At some point, she realized that she
didn't really care where they were, that her guessing game was a distraction, a
coping mechanism. She was already beginning to adapt.
Had he
said "Washington?"
She tried
to remember, but those first few minutes were a horribly jumbled nightmare in
her mind. Washington was seven hours away, and he said they needed to pick up
others.... Did they really intend to keep her like this for seven or more hours?
She told
herself she would get this straightened out when they gave her access to a
phone. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake. The government didn't "disappear" people
in America even under the Dunford administration.
Unfortunately,
she was mistaken.
***
Evil festers in some people...always has, always will.
The danger is that these people come together in support of a good cause.
This perplexes ordinary folks and leaves them vulnerable to tyranny.
Taken from the
writings of
The Honorable F. Jacob
Price,
Chief Justice of
the Mississippi Supreme Court
The presidential election of 2104 was the
most bitterly contested in the nation's history. Both parties railed against
America's foreign wars and against the growing threat that some nation would
use nuclear weapons to secure the resources it needed. It was Benjamin Aaron Dunford's controversial plan for a
national system of deep bomb shelters, however, that struck the right chord
with the public. It was the instant fix that traditionally appealed to
Americans.
During
the campaign, he declared, with pseudo-scientific proof, that the country was
in an irreversible death spiral fighting over dwindling resources, and that its
survival depended on "self-protectionism." This new "ism" struck just the right
chord, and the frightened public elected Dunford with the strongest mandate
since FDR and the Great Depression.
Broadly
speaking, Dunford's plan was to turn the 12,000 larger caves and caverns of Appalachia,
specifically of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, into habitable
shelters. These shelters would be underground towns, fully equipped to produce those
necessities needed to sustain life for a long time, connected by a system of electric-train
tunnels.
He never
said how many people the Appalachia caves would hold or for how long, but the
public was happy to look beyond these details. What caused more debate was the
reasonable claim that a global race to build bomb shelters would be
self-fulfilling, that once there were enough habitable caves, there would be
nothing to stop the missiles from flying. Dunford sidestepped this concern with
the empty response that "only a liberal would build his house out of straw."
The day
after his election, Dunford named his cabinet. It consisted entirely of powerful
corporate leaders, like him, who had supported his campaign. He gave them control
of the nation's eight-trillion-dollar-per-year federal budget, and in return,
they pledged to use their apply their corporate resources to cave conversions.
The Appalachia cave system had the dubious distinction of being the largest
project ever attempted by mankind.
Over
time, serious scientists began to dig more deeply into the project. Most economists
and sociologists claimed that the numbers simply did not work, that they simply
could not hold, distribute, or produce enough basic human necessities to maintain
an American standard of living. Dunford
responded to these critics by again calling them liberal nay-sayers. Privately,
however, he was also worried and assembled an army of government experts to work
the problem. He needed a model for his underground empire that worked, and he
didn't care what it took.
Dunford's
experts eventually agreed that a viable middle-class could not exist in the
caves. Instead, they recommended a modified feudal system. This new economic
model would include slaves, peasants, soldiers, and nobles, which they
euphemistically called workers, tradesmen, peacekeepers, and leaders. The
workers would make up 80% of the underground population and produce most of the
food and other necessities. However, to make it work, they could only consume about
40% of what they produced, which would mean oppressing them just as the nobles
and military had oppressed the peasants in Tenth Century Europe.
Of
course, this controversial report never saw the light of day, but Dunford
agreed with its conclusions. He told the country that he was working on a plan
that would save every American, but that Americans would need to make temporary
sacrifices.
Most
people accepted this and accepted the need for mandatory "national service" on
an emergency basis. This started slowly by transferred all two million federal and
state prisoners to the caves "for the duration" as workers. Eventually, they
began to "federalize" whole towns and move the town's "volunteers" into the
caves.
Everyone
knew this was an abuse of power, but most excused it as necessary. The only open
resistance to Dunford's policies came from colleges and universities, who protested
with increasing ferocity the loss of their rights.
CHAPTER ONE
The riot raged around the cop car, but all Megan
could think about were her bare nipples pressed against the seat's faux leather.
She had fought back fiercely during the melee, and one of the pigs had "accidentally"
ripped open her shirt. Thus, the reason her tits were bare. The reason she
could not do anything about it was that they had cuffed and hobbled her, making
it impossible for her to move.
She wasn't a violent person, and she
certainly didn't advocate violence against the police, but this was different.
This time the cops had attacked them for no reason. It was almost as if they
were punishing them for protesting. When the cop who ripped open her shirt had
leered at her tits, she had gone a little crazy and kicked him in the shins
with her fashionably heavy combat boots.
In retrospect, that had been a mistake.
The cops always focused on the violent
ones, on those who had the temerity to fight back. Her kick had caused them to
swarm her. They quickly had her cuffed behind with her ankles hobbled and
strapped to her wrists. The spit-gag had been gratuitous punishment for her
continued resistance. Finally scared, she had stopped fighting, but they were determined
to arrest her. Four of them lifted her off the ground and dumped her in the cop
car's backseat.
The cops had arrested her before but never
like this. Usually, they just pushed protesters into a police van, took names, kept
them in lock-up for a few hours, and let them go. It was humiliating but also
validating--protest leaders like her needed street-creds and the only way to
get them was to fuck with the pigs and spend a night in jail.
This was completely different. This was
personal. She knew it the moment the pig had ripped open her shirt, the moment
they had shoved the gag in her mouth.
The rally had been peaceful and the
rhetoric relatively mild when the cops had showed up. The students had ignored
their disapproving glares, but when she started to speak, they had charged the
crowd with nightsticks flying. There was no escape; they had blocked every exit
from the quadrangle.
The violent student response was entirely predictable
and justified. She had seen her boyfriend, Steve Foster, one of the rally's
organizers, trying to leave through the library, but the cops had blocked that
way out as well. They were using tasers at this point and pepper spray, which provoked
an even more violent student response. Even now, she could still feel the rage boiling
inside.
They had no right...no reason to attack! Calm
down, she told herself. Take it easy. It's over. The more they abuse us, the
more support we acquire.
The soothing words helped. Nothing else
mattered right now except her pride. The pigs had seen her bare chest. Not that
she had anything to hide, anything to be ashamed of, her tits were perfect.
They were the ones who should be ashamed. Yes, the students had fought back,
but only after the cops had used violence. This was a classic case of
cop-revenge, a police riot. They had targeted her specifically because she had
been on the dais at the time of the attack standing behind a huge placard that
read, "Fuck Dunford."
Then there was the other reason...they had
singled her out because she was pretty. It was happening more often these days;
everyone was talking about it. Increasingly, the pigs were targeting hot chicks.
It was an outrageous abuse of their power, but it was also understandable.
Girls were easier to subdue and there was always the opportunity of copping a feel.
It was a power thing...the cops had it and they loved to flaunt it in front of
someone like her, someone worth scaring. It was the badge, the gun, the uniform,
the power.... It made them feel invulnerable and brought out the sadism that had
made them want to be cops in the first place.
BASTARDS...! Fucking bastards!
Copping a feel... Is this where this
expression came from?
Whatever...
It was too bad. She had been looking
forward to getting laid tonight. Obviously, this wasn't going to happen now. He
would most likely be spending his night in the hospital, and she would be
spending hers in holding cells with dozens of other students.
The thought of the cells didn't bother her.
The real source of her fear was being alone and hogtied in the back of a cop
car. She was defenseless and isolated here, and that was not a good place to be
when tempers and passions were running so high and hot.
Yes, she had kicked a cop, so what...? He had
been staring at her, leering at her tits. Any magistrate would understand why
she felt the need to lash out. She had the evidence of her torn short, and
scores of witnesses if it came to that. It had been a police riot, plain and
simple. The NYPD would want to cover it up. Dunford's federal goons would make
sure of it. Dunford didn't need any more bad press on college campus. His name was
already a curse word for students.
Dunford...!
She hated the president, hated everything
he stood for, hated his condescending expressions, his smug smile, and that
stupid lock of hair that he thought made him look young. Mostly, she hated his policies,
especially the absurdly named self-protectionism. The construction of the caves
was an abomination. Instead of building a massive system of bomb shelters, America
should be cultivating relationships with other countries, finding ways to share
resources.
This was the only sane way forward for
humanity. War was the end, the "final solution" for everyone. Having mankind return
to the caves like prehistoric creatures was nonsense. Dunford's policies would
start a shelter-race and produce the very result he says is inevitable. The more
he isolates the country from the world, the more chance there was of nuclear
conflict. This was what every opponent, every sensible and courageous professor
in the country was saying.
It was what she had been saying when...
The car's overhead light came on suddenly
and a cop slipped in behind the wheel.
"Time for you to go to jail, Megan, to go
directly to jail, and not to collect your $100," he said cheerfully. He was
speaking far too loudly, obviously excited, hopped up on adrenaline. Bashing
heads and breaking bones took a lot of energy, she thought. She was still
riding an adrenaline high as well, but hers was defensive.
One of the cops who had put her in the
hogtie had found her student ID in her hip pocket. He had been feeling up her
ass at the time...another piece of the story for her to tell the magistrate. The
NYPD had more than its fair share of thugs in uniform. Everyone knew it. It was
the same for all American cities nowadays. It was as if...
"They are going to hold you tonight at the station
and charge you in the morning. Most of us were hoping they would haul your
asses off to Riker's, but the brass decided that it would be better to let you cool
down at the precinct. I would have thrown you to the animals at Riker's and let
them feast, but the guys in charge don't want to push things too far. The
holding tanks at the precinct are going to be overflowing tonight. We might not
have room for everyone, but we can always find space for the ringleaders and
those who fought back, for those who would hit a cop, like you, my dear."
She wanted to answer him, to tell him to
fuck off, to say that she had not been doing anything wrong, that he had
provoked her into kicking and biting with his lecherous staring. The gag was
frustrating. Maybe he was a decent guy, she thought. If she could speak, maybe
he would acknowledge the truth of their encounter and relax the hogtie that was
arching her back painfully. Then again, he might just be another bastard like the
rest of them. It was just hopeful thinking that he had the decency to...
Her father was going to be pissed, she suddenly remembered. One of her friends would
call him tonight, and he would be there in the morning to get her out. It would
mean another lecture on "perspective and proportionality," his favorite theme,
but at least he would be there. At least, she hoped he would be there. Lately,
he had been making noises about leaving her to her own fate, saying that he had
done everything he could for her and that if she wanted to ruin her life, to
spend her college years in jail, there wasn't much he could do to prevent it.
Proportionality...!
Did the fucking Dunford administration act
with proportionality when it sent troops into Mexico to expropriate their oil
fields? Was it proportional when the Dunford's puppet congress revoked the 22nd
Amendment, allowing Dunford to stay in office
for a twelve-year term? Was the order to empty all federal prisons and "put
criminals to work in the caves" proportional?
No! It
was not.
It was academia
that was acting with proportionality. If anything, students
and their professors were being too easy
on the administration. If anything, they were...
The car
drove out of the quad onto Broadway. She couldn't see much lying on the back
seat, but she could tell where they were from the city's lights and sounds. The
26th Precinct was just a few blocks away. Suddenly, the cop driving made a
sharp turn into a dark space and stopped. It was an alley.
"I'm
feeling a little randy tonight, Megan, after all that excitement. How about
you?"
A spike of fear rose from her stomach and settled
in her throat. Would he dare...? She would tell him who her father was as soon as
the gag was off. She would explain that... Panicked thoughts came quickly to mind
then died like drops of water on a hot skillet.
Why not fuck her...?
Who was going to stop him...?
Who was going to listen to her after...?
He had the power, all the power. She knew
instinctually that neither decency nor consequence would stop a man like this. He
was the worst kind of bully, one that had courage only when he had the
advantage. She shook her head, her incredible eyes wide with fright. He turned
and stared at her over the seatback.
"You are quite a piece of ass, you know, Megan.
We have a good eye for ripe, young foxes like you. You know what we say in the
26th...? 'Why bother with the skanks when you can latch onto a juicy piece?' Like
you! It makes sense, right? ...One of the perks of the job."
She was shaking her head and grunting her
protest when he got out and opened the back door.
"Do you want to do it on the ground or in
the backseat? I vote for the backseat; it's a little more cramped, but who
knows what filth is down there. What do you think?"
She tried to scream for help, but the spit gag
made it impossible to make a sound louder than a pig-like grunt. She tried
kicking out at him, but the hobble and wrist strap made that impossible as well.
He ignored her distress.
"Don't tell me you are a virgin, Megan. I'm
sure the rich boys at Columbia are banging a fox like you all the time. One
more fucking by a street cop is not going to make any difference to you...unless
you are a lesbo. Is that the problem?"
He sat back for a second, pretending to think.
"It doesn't matter to me, of course, I just
want a taste of your luscious pussy. I don't care if you prefer a cock or a tongue
inside you."
He swung her legs off the seat, and she
fell heavily into the footwell. He sat down with his hand resting on her tight
ass.
"...Tell you what. You do me right, and maybe,
just maybe, I'll just let you go.
"No one is going to notice if you make it
to the station or not. All I need to do is remove your cuffs and you can run your
tight ass back to your dorm. You can be sitting in class tomorrow morning instead
of waiting in a holding tank for your arraignment. What do you say?"
She stared at him for a second then shook
her head no. It wasn't that she had anything against having sex with him-yes, he
was overweight, but on the other hand, he was almost handsome in a
storm-trooper kind of way-she just couldn't bring herself to pay for her
freedom with sex. Anyway, it was well known that cops were treacherous. He
would probably fuck her then take her in anyway. He stared at her for a minute
then smiled and shrugged.
"Okay, if you want it rough, I'm amenable. I'll
just fuck you quick, and we will be back on our way. How's that sound...?"
She tried to scream, but again managed
nothing more than a grunt.