Freedom Files
Dax and Abby 2091
I honestly can’t remember what the food tasted like or any detail in the room. I was consumed with desire, and my focus burned deep into Abby. She was the sun and I was but a small planet orbiting her every move. Her words carried a weight I had not known, with deep emotion in each utterance. I was bathed in the rush of endorphins as I rode the waves of all the human emotions. That was bliss. On that night, from the moment we left the auditorium we had experienced what I now know is love. There was nothing else just us, talking, laughing, carrying on as if we were the only two people on the planet. In those hours before we kissed I knew then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with that woman. She was my everything.
We touched the center of the universe together, lost, and yet not lost, afraid, and yet not afraid. Our breathing in synch, eyes fixed on each others’, we tumbled down the worm hole and back again. Then we kissed.
***
The next few days flew by and I almost forgot about the assignment, one I wasn’t particularly fond of. I didn’t agree with the 2nd constitutional congress decision to keep the 2nd amendment as it was at the founding. In my head I justified going through the book and formulating a good set of questions because I could pose them to the woman who ultimately was the amendment’s biggest supporter. That Friday night I began reading The Gun Games.
The Gun Games
Kona High School, 2022
“In the years since the assassination of Rene de Garcia and Matthew Mattox…” The tall thin teacher stopped and turned toward the class.
“Miss Sanchez,” She said, taking two steps forward and dropping her chin just enough to peer over her glasses, “could you please explain in your own words what the article was about?
“Um…” she rolled her huge hazel eyes back, took a deep breath, and said, “In the years since the assassination of Rene de Garcia and Matthew Mattox, this article, describes the wars in the states that have not complied with the new federal mandate outlawing firearms.”
Mrs. Athena smiled and asked can I see a hands raised of those who think guns should be outlawed.” All but two kids shot their hands into the air.
Mrs. Athena took a step forward, placed her hands on the corner of her desk, and gently sat against it, scissoring her long slender legs.
She sighed and asked, “Do you think living here in Hawaii where the guns have already been confiscated will shield us from what some are calling the second civil war?”
Sara, one of the smarter students raised her hand and Mrs. Athena nodded at her.
Sara said, “Well, I think as soon as those other states give up their guns we can get back to how it used to be.”
“Yeah,” a boy in the back yelled.
“You have something to add, Andrew?”
“No, well, yes I just don’t understand why they won’t comply.”
Reed Dougherty had heard enough. The future air force pilot was the Brigadier Sgt for the civil air patrol. He Blurted out, “They are standing up for the second amendment and the constitution of this country.”
Mrs. Athena smiled, swirled around, and hurried over to the board. She wrote down, ‘2nd amendment.’
“Can anyone tell me what the second amendment says?” she asked.
Reed didn’t have to wait. He knew it well. “The 2nd amendment states, ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ ”
“Thank you, Reed, so what does this all mean?” She asked, opening the discussion to the class.
Tristan, a blonde surfer, raised his hand and she acknowledged him with, “Your thoughts, Tristan?”
“Well, Miss, that constitution was written a long time ago by people who didn’t know how dangerous the world would become.”
Chapter 2
San Bernardino, California 2022
Bang! Bang!…. Two shotgun blasts rang out. Ricky Cisneros flew off his feet and landed on the hood of his Porsche Spyder. As he Clutched his chest, his limp body slid down onto the ground. Hundreds of fully equipped SWAT team members rushed past him. He could see feet running by and he could hear gunshots, but he couldn’t move and was struggling for breath.
Suddenly someone grabbed him. “This one’s alive,” a voice yelled.
“Bag him,” another yelled, as a black bag came over his head.
***
The ATF agents were posing in front of the huge cache of weapons they just stumbled onto in a hidden room behind the walk in closet. There was a large variety of weapons ranging from small 38’s to a grenade launcher and hundreds of assault rifles.
“Hey Bob, what kind of guns are these?” a small, thin, young man asked.
Bob a long time veteran, rolled his eyes, and said, “Look here rookie,” he said, pointing at the writing on the side of the gun. “This is Russian so I would venture to say they are foreign guns.”
Chaz, an eager young rookie just out of his only stint in the Army, joined the ATF because it was the only agency that offered him a job.
A sniper by training, he had a great deal of knowledge about firearms, specifically rifles. But these guns looked different than any he had ever seen. Yes, they were a standard design but they were made by a manufacturer he had never seen. He shook his head, but didn’t have time to find answers so continued bagging and tagging each of the weapons. He ran his fingers over the cold steel. He knew the writing was Russian, but he didn’t accept the old man’s assumption. He thought to himself, “these morons don’t even recognize something as important as new guns made to look like Russian guns, but they aren’t.”
He picked up a long magazine and looked at it.
Bob slapped him on his back, saying, “you thought they stopped making these?”
Chaz looked up at him, “Yes, Sir, I did sir!”
Bob chuckled, “Only in America.”
Chaz shook his head in disapproval, saying, “Who is this guy?”
Bob laughed, and said, “Ricky Cisneros, AKA Rick Dog, one of the biggest drug dealers in the world.”
Chapter 3
Kona High School, 2022
Mrs. Athena’s classroom was set up in with the students facing each other in groups of 4. As they walk into the class she handed each group the same prompt for the day’s discussion.
The objective, each group was to discuss the prompt and come to an agreement on their position regarding it.
Today the paper says, “Should the whistle blower Chaz Hyland be given a trial or treated as an enemy combatant?”
Katrina bounced through the groups, swirling around, sending her tie-dyed dress spinning out, before she plopped down next to Leila. Overwhelmed by the remnants of frankincense and myrrh Katrina was burning in her car, Leila turned and held her nose and asked. “Jesus, Kat do you have to burn those right before class?”
“Nemetsuna.” Katrina said with a smile
“Ne met su what?” Lela asked
“Nemetsuna, means ‘I don’t know.’ It is the highest form of enlightenment.” She said smiling.
Lela rolled her eyes.
Reed and Megan sat down at the same time, but did not acknowledge each other or Leila and Kat who sat across from them.
Reed held up the prompt and read it aloud. “ ‘Should the whistle blower Chaz Hyland be given a trial or treated as an enemy combatant?’ ” He looked up for a response.
Megan asked, “Who is Chaz Hyland?”
Leila rolled her eyes, and snorted, “Are you serious?”
Katrina inserted her positive vibes, with, “He is the hero who blew the whistle on the government and the new war on guns,” she smiled and continued, “He was captured last year but hasn’t been given a trial. Mrs. Athena had a whole presentation of it last week.”
Megan squinted her left eye and tilted her head to the side, saying, “Huh, musta slept through that one.”
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Reed cut her off with, “No surprises there, but really, let’s see where we stand all in favor of a trial, say Aye,”
Reed and Kat both said, “Aye.”
“Ok, Leila, what do you think?”
Leila looked at Kat and addressed her as if Reed was not there, saying “Kat, I’m kind of on the fence on this one. Don’t you think this could have all been avoided if he would have just gone to the authorities?”
Chapter 4
ATF Riverside Office, 2022
Chaz was given the arduous task of logging in all of the weapons from the day’s raid. The smile on his face showed how proud he was to be on the right side of the law. Each moment that passed gnawed away at a growing curiosity. Then after hundreds of the same assault rifle, one he picked up was different. He flipped it over and inspected the writing. He tilted his head to the left so he could read the serial number, pulled out his cell phone, and took a picture.
That afternoon at his work desk, he pulled up a search for the serial numbers and make of the only gun that stood out to him. Nothing hit, so he reluctantly decided to wait until tomorrow to follow up.
On his way home that night, just before he stepped into a bathroom stall at the train station, he felt a surge of energy as his body started to convulse and dropped him to the ground.
“A stun gun,” he thought to himself as his body shook and gyrated. Then the world turned black.
The room was still spinning when the security guard finally got Chaz to awaken. The police chalked it up as a normal robbery, but Chaz had his doubts. Yes they had taken his wallet and phone, but what kind of thief leaves a gold band on someone they went to the trouble of knocking out?
The next morning when he arrived at work, his worst fears were realized. His computer had crashed overnight and the IT guy had to replace his hard drive. The information he thought he had about the gun was gone. He made his was down to the evidence locker to get the gun, but to his surprise and horror the gun was gone.
Concerned, he went directly to his supervisor, where he was told, “It’s a ‘need to know’ thing, and you don’t need to know.”
Not deterred, Chaz marched down to the holding cell to question Ricky Cisneros himself. As he approached it quickly became evident that something was wrong,
“Paramedics,” he thought to himself,
“What happened here?” he asked the closest guard.
“Prisoner brawl,” The guard stated, smirking. “They think that this one is going to die.”
He pointed over at the paramedics rushing someone out on a stretcher.
“Who was it?” Chaz asked.
“The drug dealer, Ricky Cisneros.”
Chaz took a step back. He felt like he had just been kicked in the gut. His heart began to pound and his palms began to sweat.
The guard asked, “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” he took a deep breath, “must have been something I ate.”
Chaz turned and started walking back to his desk.
Chapter 5
Kona High School, 2022
Mrs. Athena stepped to the front of the class and raised her hand. The students who noticed her began to quiet down as a wave of silence washed over the class.
“Thank you,” she said after everyone gave her their attention.
“I would like to split up the class into two sides. If your group thinks Chaz should be treated as a terrorist and enemy combatant with no right to a trial please head to the back of the class. Those who think he deserves a trial, head to the front. Go!”
The class exploded into a chaotic frenzy of movement as they pushed and pulled all the furniture out of the middle of the room. In the back of the room sat the groups who saw Chaz as a traitor. They sat in a straight line of chairs facing the front of the room. One group of four sat in the front of the room in a straight line facing the other five groups.
“I would like to start with our only group who thinks Chaz deserves a trial,” said the teacher. She looked over at Kat, Leila, Megan, and Reed. “So who would like to start?’
All three girls pointed at Reed who got up and started speaking in front of them. He said, “When a person stands on the principles of the constitution, his actions should be seen as the highest form of patriotism. This is our position.”
Chapter 6
Fontana, California, 2022
Chaz peered out around the door jamb of the stairwell exit at the end of the hall in the hospital. A guard was standing just in front of Ricky Cisneros’s room. Chaz took a deep breath and walked straight to the guard who was wearing a local police uniform. As he approached he pulled out his ATF Badge and ID and smiled before saying, “How is our prisoner faring today?”
The police officer didn’t recognize Chaz, but the ID and badge was enough to break the ice. “He’s still hanging in there,” he said.
Chaz smiled and said, “They’re like cockroaches. They just refuse to die.”
The cop laughed and said, “I hear that.”
“Has he been coherent over the last couple of hours?”
“Yeah, he won’t shut up. The nurses are thinking about giving him a more powerful sedative because they think he is experiencing some kind of paranoid break.”
“Great! That’s gonna make my job real easy,” Chaz said, rolling his eyes.
“What do you need from him?”
“Answers,” he said, holding up a manila folder. “He could lead us to a bigger fish.”
“I’m not sure you’ll get much.”
“I gotta try. I don’t want to piss off the boss.”
“I know how that goes.”
Chaz opened the door and slipped into Ricky’s room, closing the door behind him.
“You here to kill me?” Ricky looked right at Chaz with piercing brown eyes.
“No, I’m here to question you.”
Ricky’s head tilted back and he raised one eyebrow. “Question me,” he said. “the G-men I talked to this morning were pretty insistent I had no information they needed.”
Chaz held up his hand and said, “You know, Ricky, not all of us G-men are the same.”
Ricky scoffed, adding, “Doesn’t matter. I’m a dead man.”
“Why, the Mexican Cartel, Tre Dog’s new leadership?”
He laughed, “You don’t even know?”
“Know what?” Chaz insisted.
“Your government or at least members of the highest level of your government is in bed with multinational gun producers, the same gun producers that want me dead.”
“That’s preposterous. Our government has outlawed the production of firearms.”
“Exactly! Supply and demand!”
What are you talking about?”
“They’re manipulating the market, Six years before the weed war, before the crash, I was approached by a G-man saying they had me dead to rights on trafficking drugs, weapons and humans. He gave me an out, told me if I helped them I would get a pardon and would be able to walk away with a hundred million dollars. The alternative, of course, was to turn them down and go to jail.”
“Do you know who this G-man was?”
“No and I never met any of the top guys either. They were way ahead of everyone else around us.”
“So how did they do this manipulation?” Chaz asked.
“I asked the same thing at the beginning, what I learned shocked me. They said in the coming years there would be a number of events that would compel the populous to crave security. They would then use their propaganda machine they control to sway public opinion toward abolishing our second amendment rights.”
“Sounds to me like they’re blowing up the market not manipulating it.”
“That’s what I said, but they were looking at it like the drugs they outlawed. Over the last seventy years of prohibition, the price of drugs increased exponentially which consequently funds the CIA’s clandestine activities and poured billions into the IMF banks. If they c
ould do the same with guns, those at the top stood to make a fortune. I wasn’t given the information I’m about to share, but rather gained it through direct involvement. Two months after my first meeting I was flown to a factory somewhere in the Chiajuajua region of Mexico. All of the Patents filed in the US for gun production were being shared with Armscorp who has hundreds of current and former employees also working for our government. The new Armscorp factory was producing millions of guns in preparation for prohibition. My operation quadrupled overnight and I had no worries because johnny law was on my side.”
“All this just for money?”
“Of course not. The kind of people we're talking about have all the money in the world. No, this is about power and control and the false dichotomy we see in our current system. Communism, Capitalism, and Socialism, are all jokes. The last hundred years or so the world has turned to Fascism. The connected, the privileged, have undone most of the new deal regulations which gave them a unique advantage in the so called free market.
“The bankers in the IMF and the top officials of Armscorp became the number one seller of arms in the world the day after the entire US gun companies were shut down.” He began to cough uncontrollably and a loud beeping blurted from his monitor. Chaz reached down and grabbed Ricky’s wrist. His heart was in V-fib.
“Shit.” He reached over and hit the red panic button on the wall and within seconds a whole team of nurses and doctors were swarming into the room.
One of them yelled, “He’s in V-fib. Get the paddles.”
They cut open his hospital gown and another one yelled, “Clear.”
Ricky’s body jolted from the surge of electricity and the line on the monitor went flat.
The whole room went silent for two seconds.
“Clear!” the doctor yelled again and another jolt of electricity surged through Ricky’s body.
Nothing. The line stayed flat.
“Time of Death?”
“What?” Chaz asked. “He can’t be... I need to question him.”