The Secret Experiment

Barbara G Louise

Description

How could they win the Earth?
They were Anarkhists. Black and white, Gay and straight, diverse in many ways, Poor and semi-affluent-‘Middle-Class,’ spending their young lives protesting government atrocities. They believed their society needed a Revolution, but how long would it be before the Poor and the Oppressed rose up to take their planet and their civilization back from the monsters who held them all in thrall? And how violent would that Revolution need to be?
How could they practice living together in equality before the Revolution?
One woman thought she had the answer: a way to make a peaceful Revolution so that no one — no Black people, no Poor people, no dedicated Activists, no LGBTQ, and no one Oppressed by a vicious economic system — needed to be killed by the violent push-back of the greedy-Rich.
She told her idea to her fiancé, a young activist with some family money who could donate the 100 acres of land needed.
Building their own mortgage-free, solar-powered housing, they became an Egalitarian-Commune, pretending to be starry-eyed dropouts from 21st-century Conservative-leaning cultures in Canada, the USA and Mexico.
In their own Charter School, outside government control, they intended to educate all the Commune’s children in the civilized ideals of the Sharing and Diversity of Voluntary-Socialism.
They believed in the Equality of all people, Christian or not, of whatever Ability to Make Money, or whatever their Colour, Gender, or sexual orientation.
But they discovered they were under surveillance. . . .
* * *
“We’ve caught a spy.” He gestured toward the mashed insect-sized drone on the glass plate under the dissecting-microscope.
“Ah, yes, a modern miracle of miniaturization. Who mashed it?”
“I did,” David said.
“Why?”
“I thought it was an insect biting me.”
“I wish you hadn’t been so good at destroying it,” Allison mumbled, peering intently into the microscopic world.
“That thing is an Enemy,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t have been more gentle.”
She again peered through the microscope at the wreck of the Enemy drone. “Clever,” she said. “They can attach themselves anywhere. That plastic camouflage-carapace gives it a mutable pattern to match whatever the background might be. These damned things were designed to be unnoticed as they spy on us. Even in people’s bedrooms, I’ll bet, via infrared. . . .”
“We don’t know how many of those damned things are all around us, or how long we’ve been spied on,” David snarled.

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663247797
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SECRET EXPERIMENT
Sequel to the Butterfly Caper
 
 
 
 
 
Barbara G Louise
 
 
 

 
THE SECRET EXPERIMENT
SEQUEL TO THE BUTTERFLY CAPER
 
Copyright © 2023 Barbara G Louise.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4780-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4779-7 (e)
 
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022921129
 
iUniverse rev. date: 01/30/2023
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
AUTHOR’S NOTES
 
 
 
 
 
for
DR. KATHY BICK MORE
who inspired the author’s interest in non-violent acti vism;
but she cannot be held responsible for what I made o f it
 
Anarkhis m is
Voluntary-Socia lism
“We have seen the results of social democracy and it’s Labour Parties; we have seen what the [ so-called ] Stalinists have done in Russia, China, Albania and their satellites. We have seen how their Left critics in the Trotskyist movement have been unable to come to grips with the real pro blem.
“ And that real problem is the Authoritarian idea that the world can be changed over the heads of the workers. It can, but it won’t be much better. Only [ Anarkhism ] with its concept of S ocialism based on individual freedom and the power of workers’ councils stands apart from all this.
“That is why, despite four decades of repression, the CNT reappeared as a real union after the death of Franco. We believe that [ Anarkhism ] is not just another choice for those who want a better world. The history of all other Left movements shows [ us ] that Anarkhism ] is a neces sity .”
~ Eddie Conlon
a Spanish Anarkhist
PROLOGUE
“When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles, in the goal that you’re striving for, not in the way you reach them.
“On the other hand, because of the way this society is organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as react ions.”
~ Angela Y. Davis, late 20th century

Someone had passed around a joint of marijuana in the backseat of the car on their way to yet another demonstration against the USA’s military-policing of the entire world . Katerine ( Kat ) Coglin — a petite, dark-haired white woman in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, wearing tortoise-shell glasses, a black-triangle pin and a rainbow-colored armband— was pleasantly stoned when the demo started downtown in Cleaveland, Ohio’s Public Square. It was enjoyable to be exercising the First Amendment to the US Constitution: “ the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble and Petition the Government for a Redress of Grieva nces .”
They disembarked their car into a sea of protest signs:

As a dedicated Anarkhist, Katerine Coglin had been engaged in peaceful protests of one government atrocity or another for all her adult life. So it should not have been a surprise to her when the violence started. But Kat was stoned, seething with good vibes, and feeling magical.
Men in white robes — with pointy hats, faces covered except for eye-holes, obviously Ku Klux Klanners — came out of nowhere swinging clubs, indiscriminately hurting Black and white people in that demonstration of anti-military protestors, screaming “ Nigger, Nigger, Nigger! Kill the snowflakes! America First! Jesus Rules! ” ( and how sad the Nazarene would have been to hear his Christian name used to spread hate ) . Kat saw it suddenly happening all around her.
In the easy frisson of her stoned-space, she saw a white policeman throw a young Black woman to the ground and begin to bind her hands behind her back with the usual weaponized twist-ties. No policemen were arresting the violent Klanners in their white-sheet, dunce-cap costumes who were attacking the unarmed , legally -demonstrating protestors.
Appalled, stoned, not thinking clearly, Kat rolled up the protest sign she was carrying — LET PEOPLE LIVE !!! — and raised it over her head, intending to swat the uniformed policeman as if he were a bad doggie . The cop turned his head and glared at Kat. The flow of time seemed to stop.
In that instant, although she had always been an activist against Racism — among many other things — Kat had an epiphany, realizing with horrible clarity — oddly for the first time in her life — that despite being terribly oppressed all of her life because she was Q ueer, she possessed a wealth of White Privilege; and oh! how much that Privilege had always protected her!
The cop turned back to his arrest of the young Black woman. Kat lowered her arm and watched, feeling useless, as the white policeman dragged off his helpless, stumbling, Black captive.
In the chaos of the suddenly-policed “ peaceful ” demonstration, as Katerine’s marijuana-high began to fade into paranoia — someone bumped into her from behind. It was another cop. As Kat, mostly unafraid, turned to murmur a polite apology, he swung viciously at the left side of her head with his baton, breaking her glasses, splattering blood, knocking her to the pavement, almost unconscious, fortunately still alive.
On the ground, with her one remaining functional-eye, Kat saw — through a blurred forest of legs — one of her fellow protestors — Bradshaw Winters, a white man — use big shears to cut the twist ties binding the stumbling, young Black woman who had just been arrested by the cop, while Alice McConnel, Winter’s strawberry-blonde fiancé, ran into the cop as if by accident, knocking him away from the Black woman. The Policeman pulled-out his gun and fired, hitting Alice in the right knee. She screamed and collapsed. There was suddenly a lot of blood.
Bradshaw continued supporting the Black woman as she disappeared into the crowd. Then, frantic, he turned back to Alice.
Kat blacked out.
*     *      *
She regained consciousness in a noisy makeshift med-station under a grey-green canvas ceiling. She was on a raised pallet near Alice McConnel. Several competent-looking people in surgical gowns and masks were working on Alice’s leg. Some people, including Bradshaw Winters, were holding Alice down —one woman stretched across her chest — while a masked and gowned figure administered a syringe-full of pain medication and then probed into the wound of her ruined knee. Alice screamed.
“Hey, lady. Come on. You’re tough. Got more guts than most,” One of the gowned people boomed through the screaming.
“We’re almost done, darling,” Brad Winters said loudly.
“Get that bleeder,” another gown said.
“Okay. Bullet went through and through; missed the thigh-bone.”
“Good.”
“Give me that new plastic knee-cap-replacer. Is it sterile?”
“Yes,” another gown said.
“Good. Open the pak carefully. Let me sew it up.”
Nauseated, Kat turned her head away so she wouldn’t have to watch.
“How do you feel?” she heard vaguely through Alice’s screaming. Kat looked up to see the kind eyes of a middle-aged woman in scrubs with a mask over her mouth and nose. She had smile lines around her eyes. The woman regarded Kat with concern.
“The cop broke my glasses,” Katerine said, sounding in her own ears like a petulant child.
“Are these yours?” the woman asked, holding out Kat’s glasses, the glass broken, the left side twisted out of recognition.
“Yes. Oh, damn.”
The woman bent to examine the left side of Kat’s skull, “Does this hurt?” she said, touching with a gloved finger.
“Ow! Yes, damnit!”

1

“ Man is born free and he is everywhere in ch ains . ”
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762
The Social Cont ract

“Will this meeting please come to order,” Bradshaw Winters said, standing up. He was a young, lean, white man with dark blonde, thinning hair going grey on the sides, in tailored shorts and a crisp Oxford shirt open at the throat.
The others, all friends and ‘ Companions in the Struggle ’ — as they thought of themselves in a Lefty sort of way — had gathered for that meeting on a Saturday afternoon at the very end of the twentieth century, a few weeks after the anti-military demo in downtown Cleaveland. Due to Global Climate Change, it was chilly for a day in May. They were more than a dozen experienced dissidents, sitting in a circle on folding chairs, in a large, echoing, wood-floored apartment on Mayfield Road in Cleaveland Hills, Ohio, just up the hill from Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city of Cleaveland proper.
There was a long table in the next room set with a catered buffet. Winters, who was one of the most affluent of the crowd, had provided lunch for the meeting he had called. Seve