We gotta mark the time to market.
We gotta kill the government.
We need your help.
It’s just a little orange county government.
But they’ve got help.
The kings and queens of the planet; all 60,00 of them.
We shall bring ‘em down; but first, we must bring down their adjutants.
Starting with the government of the county of Orange.
– –
Naming Orange County for William of Orange is like naming a Klu Klux Klan Grand Dragon Martin, for Martin Luther King.
We have help.
We have information specialists. And we have targeting.
War is a war of information.
And what the information does.
– –
This is a story of our action in Santa Ana.
Justice is fairness.
– –
Over the sky I watch the drones circle, mapping the bodies inside the office buildings. We have not had any collaborators inside any of their offices for over 5 days, and so our simulation data could be fresher.
Gait analysis, the computer assisted analysis of walking gaits in humans, can identity individuals based on their walk, through steel and cement, using radio-transmitted heat data.
We just watch the monkeys move.
Monkey, monkey, in your tree. Comin’ to get you.
– –
Public executions are out. They don’t play well on the six o clock news. Nor do public confessions play well; they’re too communist.
We have elected to do the nude county fair style Dunk-the-County-Official.
First we strip them naked.
Then we tie them to the stand.
Then we throw apples at the target; our broadcasts straight to the cloud and our estimated audience of 3.4 million souls, our con-conspirators in this political event, in this snatch-and-grab.
We count amongst our ranks former Navy Seals, former politicians, writers and sports newscasters, public and private school teachers, drug dealers, skateboarders, accountants.
—
It still gets dirty close up, though.
– –
“Let me go!” the woman shrieks, as I pull her by the hair down the hallway, past the cubicles.
She’s a little Albert Speer, don’t you see? Only not as smart.
We strip her naked in downtown Santa Ana, and tie her to the metal collapsible seat.
She’s crying.
I’m only a monkey like she is; I feel some of her pain. But I know that she has not learned. This will teach her something.
– –
What would you like, eh?
You don’t believe this story.
What would you believe?
What would you believe, eh?
Tell me and I’ll tell you that version.
– –
How about:
I am an evil communist. I read Marx every night. I am an enemy of democracy.
But the truth is, we’re building democracy. There’s never been one on the face of the earth.
– –
Under our sky the children laugh to see the naked woman sobbing, and they toss the apples at the target with my encouragement
“She starved the poor to death,” I tell the children, as they throw the apples.
– –
We bear only legal weapons; we work within the new systems.
My name is Frank Simpson. I am forty-five years old.
I slept on the street for six months’; that was enough for me.
I want to kill them; but I know I can’t.
Public humiliation will have to do.
– –
DO you understand this part?
They’re coming for you too, you know.
All you ignorant souls.
What is neither warm nor cold shall be spat out of thine mouth, it shall fix upon your eye a memory a mark a ruin and a word, my word, and the word of my peers, that you are damned.
But not in the afterlife, baby. Here. We damn people here.
– –
Still, like I said, we work within the system. It’s a war of information; we don’t kill people.
That’s why I’m writing you this story.
Our audience is only 3 million [people. That’s less than 1/100th of Earth’s population. Perhaps the broadcast you saw described us as freakish performance artists, perhaps we were described as terrorist, I don’t know. There’s a lot of misinformation.
– –
You haven’t suffered like I have; but then, you’ve had your own suffering. Was it enough? Was it enough to make you see? Probably not.
But it will be.
It will be, baby!
Our technology is government-issue. Did I tell you that part?
Wall Street is betting on us.
– –
I’m gonna fuck you up so hard.
Just kidding. I love you, at least a little. And I’m gonna fuck you up so hard. What I mean by that is: I’m gonna change your mind. One way or another.
– –
My woman lives alone, in a city called Orange, named for William of Orange. Naming orange county for William of Orange, liberator of England, is like naming the Ku Klux Klan after Martin Luther King.
We live in a region that hates liberty.
We live in a region that hates you. All of you. They hate each and every one of you.
Don’t you hate ‘em back?
Why not?
Why are you so fuckin’ stupid?
– –
We dance in the street but we dance slow; we know what we’re up to. We got democracy baby, it’s a dirty business.
Cleanliness is not next to godliness, no. It’s dirt that’s god. We’re the dirt; we’re god.
Dance with us.
– –
We wrap the sobbing woman in a robe. We take her picture. We make her sign a document that she will not sue us.
She’s crying so hard. It’s good for you, crying. It’s therapeutic. Then we drive her home.
—
We’re building farms.
Building farms.
We’re razing office buildings.
We’re democracy baby, coming at you.
– –
Everyone in power hates the people. We’re the people, and, quite often, we hate ourselves.
Like a bunch of self-hating Jews, come to build an Israel.
– –
I know it’s hard. I know you think you know, but you don’t.
I know. Let me tell you.
It’s like this, every little bit of insist, it’s a tryst, every little bit of insist, it’s a tryst, come to me in the dark and I’ll show you a kiss, to sentimentalize the revolution, to explain the misattribution of our loves, and our dreams.
Every little bit of insist, kissed on our mouths by the County like Mafiosi pressed against our face, it sinks into the spine, like wine, it’s divine, it moves us to the blows we got for you and yours, all you little fascists, all you little haters.
You’ve been hiding. Well, come outside, we’re right here.
– –
Human rights are a funny business. We keep getting more of them. It started back with: you have the right not to be eaten by dinosaurs. Courtesy of the Asteroid.
And they just kept coming.
– –
My woman is dancing:
She looks like medusa with her hair, she looks like Helen the Fair, it’s on a dare, I’m there, my music is a sword I road the fluid of my movements on the sore of the asphalt, the sore of the asphalt, the ruin of the dreams of men, and women, we are telling every thing we can, it’s not a plan, just another action, tell me cutie will you remember this when we are dead, it’s lead we pressed against your face, just a little genetic revolution, like a dance,
I hold your waist, and then—
Cha cha cha!
*
Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. You can find him on the web at www.robindunn.com.