“Okay, great!” said Kylee. “Theo is elected leader of our group. The meeting is yours!” She pulled Theo to his feet, gave him a kiss on the cheek and sat back down.
“Alright,” said Theo, “I’d like to put it on the record that I think you guys are crazy to believe in me but… I’ll do everything I can. Everything.”
He looked around. These faces looked at him with hope, faith and trust. He would do right by these people who had put their lives in his hands. He would see this through as far as it could go.
“So,” he began. “We’ve got a few very obvious problems here. I want to talk about those before we speculate what else Tiberius and his people have up their sleeves. First thing is this ritual fighting to the death. Encouraging the people who are chosen to refuse to fight is impossible. Michelle is right about that. We all saw that man die at the hands of the Security Force. Even if there’s a limit to how long this ‘population control’ will go on, we know there will be more deaths. We need to figure something out, and fast. There will be another series of battles in the next couple weeks. It could be any of us on the ground there deciding whether to take a life or die for a hopeless cause.”
“So how do we put a stop to it?” asked Kylee.
“Well,” said Theo, “the biggest challenge is the involvement of the Security Force. Do you have any idea what’s going on there? The force at the arena seemed to be in sync with what Tiberius wanted.”
“You don’t know that, man,” said Bill. “Who knows what the hell was going on behind those ‘death masks?’ They might not have thought they had a choice.”
“That is a good point,” said Joseph.
“It is a good point,” said Kylee, “I’ll give you that, but there’s more involved with this. I might not have much access to the Security Force anymore but I still have a few friends in there. Men and women like Officer Menendez are being pushed aside and those who are given the most important jobs are diehard Tiberius supporters. As frightening as it is to think about, I’m pretty sure most of those black helmet guys really believed they were doing the right thing.”
“What about Menendez?” asked Ryan. “Couldn’t we try to get him involved here? Have him help us in some way?”
“I doubt he’d go for that,” said Kylee. “It’s not that he wouldn’t want to help, but there’s obviously enormous risk for anyone who does anything against the regime.”
“It’s probably the same thing for Dougherty,” said Theo. “He’s caught in the middle of all of this and I’m sure he knows how expendable he is to the leadership. Not that I’m entirely sure how to contact him anyway.”
A moment passed while everyone gathered his or her thoughts. Theo realized he was going to have to be the one to break these silences and keep the meetings moving.
“Okay,” he said, “so let’s put aside the notion of getting ourselves in the middle of this gladiator horror show at the arena.” He raised his hand as he saw the beginnings of protest. To his astonishment, everyone settled down. “I’m not saying we forget about it. We can’t. Even so, I want our time here to be productive. We don’t know how often we can meet or how long this can go on before we can’t meet anymore for one reason or another. There’s no apparent strategy for dealing with the arena problem so let’s look at some other ways we can make an impact.”
“What did you have in mind, Theo?” asked Brian.
“Well, the younger people on this island are having a major problem. The school system was horrible to begin with. Even Mayor Lucas knew that. Now it’s a complete joke. Even training for a career is not necessarily a good use of time because so far Tiberius has gone out of his way to limit job access to only be available to those over a certain age.”
“Are you sure that’s such a bad thing?” asked Michelle. “I’m as upset as any of you that school has gone by the wayside, but that was the old world. Here all that matters is developing particular skills. Maybe Tiberius wants to be sure that people are trained properly before having access to the most important components of government.”
“You sound like you agree with him,” said Jamie.
“I’m not saying he’s not a horrible man,” said Michelle, “but he seems to know what it will take to keep the country going. These are the early years. What history will probably call primitive years. Maybe in a few generations things will make more sense. You all want that for yourselves and it’s understandable, but we are pioneers in a new world. We can’t have it all. Tiberius gets that.”
“Fine,” said Theo. “Let’s keep the conversation tonight on what we can accomplish to make life bearable for everyone. Can we all agree on that?” It seemed they could.
“Our problem…well, one of our problems, seems to be that we are just too small. It’s incredible having you all join us, but we need more manpower.” He looked at Kylee. “Or…woman power, you know.” Laughter circulated through the group. Theo was glad to be able to lighten the mood.
“Every day when I walk to work, I pass by the communal housing. I guess many of you have seen it, or at least know what I’m talking about. These are people who have been pushed out of their place in the new society. In many cases we are talking about women and children, with the husbands in prison for things that should not be considered crimes. What I’m getting at is maybe we should start by seeing what we can do to help some of them. They are already on our side, in the sense that they are against what Tiberius is doing. We need to let them know that there’s a force for good out there. People willing to take a stand. We can start recruiting and building, and then maybe we can tackle the problems that will require some force. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” said Dale. Everyone turned to him, surprised to hear him speak. “Winning hearts and minds. I like it, man. That’s…that’s really why I’m here, anyway.”
“What do you mean, Dale?” asked Theo.
“I’m supposed to be living in those broken down projects by the farms. Tiberius’s men took my dad away. I don’t even know if he’s alive or in jail or what. My mom and my little sister are suffering and I came to stay with Brian and Liz to see what could be done to help them. You guys are exactly what I was praying for.”
“Dale, I’m really sorry to hear about your dad,” said Theo. “We will do everything we can for your family. I’m glad you’re here with us. What do you suggest we do to help them?”
“They need food. Their rations are ridiculous.”
“Okay,” said Bill, “let’s steal them some food.”
“Are you serious?” said Michelle. The look on her face said she had never seen anything so incredibly stupid as the direction this conversation had turned. “You want to steal from the government? The food is distributed from a central facility in the heart of the city. You want to steal right under the nose of the leadership. You’re insane. All of you are insane if you’re even entertaining this nonsense.”
“That’s enough!” Ryan had jumped to his feet and was staring at Michelle, furious. “You’re going on and on and on criticizing every move we want to make, while praising a homicidal maniac for having good managerial skills! I know you’re scared, I know you feel powerless, but guess what? We all feel that way and some of us are trying to do something about it! Theo helped many of us when we were completely and utterly lost. We’ve all tried to make sense of all of this and help people wherever we could, but you shut yourself up in records, whatever the hell that is, and tried to pretend that this was all a bad dream that would go away!”
“You’re the ones who are dreaming!” Michelle was on her feet as well. “I’m sorry, Ry, but I’m the only one here who realizes that Tiberius may be wrong about many things but he’s going to make sure that the nation as a whole survives and flourishes. All these fanciful things you are talking about… stopping the fighting, feeding the hungry? You are going to get yourselves killed! I have known some of you a good amount of my life and I love and care about all of you and I am telling you the path you are choosing is absolute death for all of us. I won’t stand by and be a party to your suicides!”