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tomtom-is-better · 4 months ago

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Chapter 1

“This is freaky.”

“So raids killing people is supposed to be justified because you're rich? God, our country is falling apart,” Marley Miller’s mom said. “This is why I don’t want you kids playing outside away from home, because I can just feel like something horrible is going to happen to you two.”

Marley's mother was talking about a radio news broadcast she was listening to. Gary Springfield just kept a mass murderer and tyrant out of prison. Again. Gary Springfield was also running for president, again. This would be his second term if he won. How terrible could life in America get any worse than this? The raids. The raids in Springfield were justifying and essentially encouraging. A raid in Portland, Oregon was currently being covered by a news channel before their helicopter was shot down. Does that count as a crime? Not here, it was called ‘crossfire’. It's the same for the raid that happened in Illinois two or so weeks ago when it ended up killing the senator.

“I just want to go to Twin Totems,” Marley said.

“Mrs Miller, we promise everything will be fines,” Lila said.

Lila was Marley’s best friend since second grade and had been by his side since. But, for the last week, Marley’s mom was taking care of Lila. Her mom was in the hospital for stage four bone cancer, and her dad was on a business trip.

“We promise, Mom,” Marley chimed in.

“Well, I don't know, I'm supposed to be taking care of Lila until her mom gets better

and-”

“Mom. It’ll be fine. We swear.”

“We swear Mrs. Miller.”

“It’ll be like a memory we’ll tell people.” Marley unscrewed the cap on his water and took a sip. “Of how my mom let us go and buy an Arizona Tea and some Hot Fries while raids were happening across the country.”

“That makes me sound like a horrible mother, but okay.” She looked at herself in the mirror. “Get me some red lipstick too, I need it for Grandpa's funeral.”

Marley's mom was always easy to convince, but you always had to get her something too.

Marley didn't know Grandpa Fred well, but he’d still go, probably in that same loose tuxedo suit his dad got him when he was eleven and still fit because he doesn’t grow much. Everyone was going to comment on how short he was.

“For sure, yep,” Marley said.

A couple of minutes later, they were racing to grab a twenty from Marley's piggy bank.

“Hey, wait, I have a wallet now,” Marley said.

“Oh. Cool?” Lila said.

Marley fished the wallet out of his back pocket and grabbed a twenty out of the big pocket.

“When did you get it?” Lila asked.

“Oh - um, I think last week or so?” Marley said, putting the twenty back in his wallet and putting it back in his pocket. “Just a four-month late birthday present.”

“Cool.” They headed downstairs.

Marley’s mom was sitting down with a bag of popcorn and turned on the TV, and guess what she turned on—the news on the raids. The Portland raid just ended, but not with many casualties. An estimated fifty thousand. One of the big things that ended up killing a lot of people was the collapse of the Wells Fargo building. He always thought that thing was humongous, and now it's rubble.

Marley just stared. He wasn't watching the news, just looking. He took in the information that was being said. This was one of the only times Marley’s mom would let him watch something this catastrophic and horrible on the news because of his anxiety.

The first was the raid in Denver, Colorado back in 2021. One of the earliest of the string of raids carrying on until today. It was odd. He was confused and he felt tired for some reason.

After the first raid, he’d gone to bed early and then puked in the morning. He’d said he was just puking up his feelings and thoughts.

That's kind of how he felt now.

Lila appeared next to him with a light purple tank top on and carrying Marley’s black jansport bag. Marley pointed to the bag with a confused look and Lila nodded toward the basketball that was on the driveway. Marley nodded at her and started to put on his Converse, and Lila slid on her crocs.

“Hey when you come back make sure to feed Bear,” Marley's mom paused, clearly thinking about something. “Marley, baby, come here.”

When Marley’s mom started talking to him like that, it was something important. Marley nodded and started walking towards her as Lila walked out the door.

“Marley. For the love of god, I can’t lose you. I’ve lost your brother, your dad probably too…just be safe.” Tears were forming in Marley’s mom’s eyes.

“Do you want me to bring my pocket knife?” Marley asked. It wasn’t truly a question. Yes, she wanted him to.

“Please.” Marley’s mom said, wiping tears from her eyes and making that weird mouth- opening-thing-when-your-done-crying face. It was his brother's pocket knife, and it was almost like a protective charm even though it was in his brother's back pocket when his ribs and head were walloped in when he got hit by that car. More on that later. Anyways, Marley put it in his right front pants pocket and walked out the door. Lila was shooting hoops and everything just seemed normal and how it always is. The only thing different is, that it was a scorcher! God was it hot - and call them wussies or anything, but 91 degrees is pretty hot, especially for Washington.

“Sheesh, I’m already breaking a sweat,” Marley wiped some sweat off his forehead. “How ‘bout you?”

“Oh, I’m living the dream,” Lila remarked.

They walked past his mom’s grey Pruis in the driveway and made their way to the store. ”

They walked. They walked and talked and laughed, they talked about how they both hated their sixth-grade math teacher, how that TikTok they watched when they were coming home from the mall today was super funny, how they were going to spend their money, how stupid Gary Springfield is.

All was well until they passed Tseelsub court.

“Five years?” Lila asked.

“Five,” Marley said.

It had been five years since he had last seen his brother. Five. This is where he died. From what they think happened, he was walking over to the woods and ended up getting hit by drunk driver Terry Barlowe. God was Terry Barlowe sorry. He just ended up breaking his nose while he killed a kid. His brother. Not just anybody.

His brother was a great person too. He would give his dessert to Marley sometimes, he would always be nice to everybody in school. He was an overall great guy.

He was found with fourteen broken ribs, a punctured lung, compound fractures in his right leg and left arm, a broken pelvis, a brain bleed, a broken nose (so broken it flew off and was found mangled a couple of feet away from him) a dislocated jaw, and missing half his hand.

He saw the body and that was just rough. They all went, Mom hesitant and sobbing, Dad just looked gone, and Marley was just out of it. Like out of his body.

It was way worse than hearing the injury list. His jaw was split down the middle and essentially falling off, his nose was gone, and the bone was just all broken and mangled. His right hand was just ripped off, the bones of each finger still visible. His right leg was just messed up. At the knee was his femur bone that was snapped sticking out of his thigh, and blood was still trickling out of the gash. His right arm was the most normal-looking one if you just didn’t look at his humerus stuck out of his shoulder. And his head. His skull was split open, and folded in on itself. Bits of his brain were clinging on for dear life, finding none.

That Terry Barlowe was crying with his nose bandaged, saying he wouldn’t drink another beer in his life, wouldn’t take another shot, or do any more drugs. He would stay clean.

It was the opposite for Marley's dad. He started drinking so much he would trip over the doorstep and throw up, then fall asleep in his pool of vomit. Then he’d repeat, wake up in the middle of the night, walk out with his keys, and take some more money out of their savings, forget to feed Bear. Walk out the door and disappear. That is what Marley wanted to do for the few weeks after Teddy's death. He would just sleep. His mom would cry. And his dad would be taking shots and some crap bar in Shelton.

“He’s dead. There’s nothing we can do to make him undead. And I’m okay with that,” Marley said. He was truly not though.

“Well, that's good,” Lila said. “My mom has stage four bone cancer and I know she might die. I’m not okay with that, but uh…yeah.”

They both paused their walking, their grieving, they just stared at the trees. The trees were swaying in the breeze and didn’t have a care in the world. Trees are weird, man.

“Well, there's nothing hooping can’t fix,” Lila said.

They cut through the tiny gate to the park since they were right there and made it to the blacktop and started hooping.

Lila was a strong athletic proud Indian girl who loved sports of all kinds, which included but were not limited to:

STUFF LILA IS GOOD AT

Kicking absolute butt in track meets

Softball

Baseball

Indoor kickball

Climbing trees

Getting in school fights and winning all of them

Being cool

Dodging school work

Dodging school work was her all-time favorite though she wasn’t very good at it. But as she racked up those missing assignments and did that test and worksheet now and then, she would say,

“C’s get degrees.”

That was her motto, and that's what she lived by. That was her role model, that sentence.

Marley was the kid who was friends with everybody, barely thought about sports, and treated them as an afterthought. He was the kid who worried about his height and what clothes he would wear, got into the occasional fight, and won like one time with words. And as a proud Skokmish Native American with a little bit of Mexican in him and white. He was also terrible at basketball. But he was good at writing and got his schoolwork done.

These are his favorite sports and whatever he does.

SPORTS AND WHATEVER

Listening to Alex G and the occasional TV Girl

Dodging reading IT for some reason

Making those resin mini foods quickly

Forgetting about Animal Crossing

Forgetting he had a bowl cut for two years

Forgetting he had a side part for a year

Eating Shin Ramen and Doritos almost every day

Being allergic to bees

Hating watermelon

Playing The Last Of Us too much

Breathing

That was also his routine too kinda, just in a different order each day. His favorite was forgetting he had a bowl cut during 2020.

She has super wavy hair, which was in one of three hairstyles - in a ponytail, a bun, or a ponytail with a little bit of hair to the side of her. Today was a ponytail. She had a light purple tank top and a rad scar she got when she fell on a really big nail when she was ten. Now it's a rad gash by her shoulder. She was wearing light blue jean shorts too. She looked a lot like Dina from The Last Of Us Part II, she said herself.

Marley on the other hand had a wavy wolf-cut-looking hair-do that was at medium length and slightly covered his eyes. He paid expert attention to his hair, hair mask, hair oils, good shampoo, and conditioner. He also paid really good attention to his teeth, since he had braces on and didn’t want to look like what his mother called, ‘An orge with white sports in his teeth.’ He also had some seriously wild arm acne that paired well with the moles scattered around his arms and chest. Right now, he had a Terminator shirt on, Empire khaki shorts, super worn-out Converse that he should replace, and a pair of his dad's black footies.

“Why are you just standing there being all sad and whatever,” Lila said, shooting for two but bricked it.

“Well because I don’t want to be in brick town.”

Lila turned around and looked super offended, and laughed.

“Then let's see you make a shot, string bean.” Lila passed him the ball and Marley laughed, also going in for a two. Good lord, he missed that shot. It hit the rim and bounced off hit a pillar and rolled into the grass.

“Oh my god,” Lila said to Marley, turning towards him. “I think you need to move to Brick City.”

They both stared at each other for a second, and their jaws dropped. Then they started laughing. They laughed so hard they were doubled up on the grimy blacktop floor. They laughed so hard, they even started to gag.

“I do not know anyone other than you who can brick a shot that worse than you can,” Lila said.

“Well, I’m good at hitting bricks,” Marley replied.

“That is not a good thing.”

“Well, whatever. We’ve been in the shade long enough, let’s get back to walking or my Mom’s going to think we're dead.”

They walked out of the blacktop and back onto the sidewalk. They passed the light-vomit green-colored house with the mean dog, passed by the haunted trail, and stopped at the sign that said Skokomish Flats.

“Hey, maybe we should go to the boardwalk after this,” Lila said. “It’d be fun.”

“Why? You know my mom would say no,” Marley said.

“Well I haven’t been there in years, so you should at least try.”

“Not true, we were there last year for Earth Day until Tony Collins threw up and we had to go home early.”

“And that's still not a full trip.”

“Okay, well let’s survive this and then we’ll talk.”

They passed by the little river thing cove that was overgrown, and something smelled awful. Like a horrible, absolutely awful scent, like walking by the bathroom near the recess door at school that was always stinky for some reason. Lila grimaced, and Marley looked to his right. There he saw the silhouette of something in a tree.

“What is that,” Marley asked.

“What is what, that smell?”

“No, that. That thing in the tree,” Marley started pointing at it. “That.”

“Oh god, I don’t know.”

“Well, let's just keep walking, it has already been like ten minutes.”

“Right.”

They continued walking down the sidewalk and decided to take the Salish Court Shortcut. It was just a walk down the street cut through the gate at the end of the court, walked to the end court connecting to it, and ended up at the casino parking lot which was right next to Twin Totems. Weirdly enough though, there were no cars on the road. And this gas station was on the highway.

“There are no cars,” Marley said.

“Well, maybe everybody is just paranoid.”

“Well, let's get what we came here for.”

“Mhm.”

They walked on the hot asphalt parking lot of the casino and over to the sidewalk and the entrance of Twin Totems. They stepped in, the automatic door sliding open and were quickly greeted by one of the workers holding a shotgun, pointed at them.

“OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD - WERE, WERE NOT EVIL!” Marley screamed, not knowing what to say.

“Whatever he said!” Lila said.

“God dammit, what the hell are you two kids doing here?” The man with the shotgun asked.

“W-were just buying food,” Lila said. “Promise.”

“Be quick, then you two have to leave, it's not safe here,” he said, lowering his shotgun. “Do you kids even know what's going on?”

“No?” Marley said.

“They're here, Gary's army. They're just driving out, it's on the news already.”

“What?” Lila said.

“Look, up there.” The man pointed to the TV in the corner of the shop.

There, was a news crew and people reporting on the scene. They were a couple of seconds behind, because there were gunshots heard near where they were filming, and the sound of a helicopter was rising in the distance that couldn't be heard on the TV yet.

“What they're thinking is that Gary’s goons set up something near the river trail.

“Why there?” Lila asked.

“Well it’s probably to just, well kid I don’t know-”

It happened in a split second almost. The sound of a gun went off on the TV. Boom. The news reporter fell backward, his head moving to his left, and the camera was splotched with the news reporter's blood. The entire gas station erupted into shrieks and screams. The news reported lay on the ground, coughing up blood. You could hear him barely make out the word ‘Nate’ before the rain of bullets they heard before were fired into the reporter's body, making him jitter like he was in the cold. The cameraman shrieked and tried to run after seeing his friend's body turn into bloody human Swiss cheese. He didn’t make it far though, with him being shot in the head. The sound of cars and trucks rushed by, and then he saw the fleet of cars moving that he was hearing on the TV. Then there were footsteps, and somebody picked up the camera. Was it somebody coming to help? No. It was a man in a clown mask picking up the camera.

“LONG LIVE GARY!” he said, throwing down the camera, and then shooting it.

Lilas's normal human response was to grab what they needed and more and stuff it in Marley’s bag, then grab his arm and run out of the store.

“What are you doing?” Marley said.

“Getting out of there!”

“We can't just leave them!”

“Yeah well, America is a free country and I can do what I want to escape a terrible situation!”

Then there was a boom. A loud one, causing Marley's ear to ring, and be thrown on the ground. He sat up, little bits of glass embedded in his face and legs, and cuts and scratches on his arm. He and Lila looked up, both beaten up and bloody, to see Twin Totems on fire, and in pieces. He stood up, looking in awe at the gas station he went to just a few days ago in flames and destroyed. His ears were still ringing, and he was just in his world. Then he felt a tug on his arm and turned over to Lila, equally confused and afraid, looking at him and motioning to the road.

They started to run, as fast as they could to the road, and another explosion went off, and this time it was one he could hear since he regained his hearing. People were standing on the roads, people getting out of their houses, and stopping their cars to look. There was a mini mushroom cloud where Twin Totems used to be ash was starting to fall, along with dirt and other things. Nobody noticed a pair of clearly displaced bloody kids running home.

They quickly jogged to the Salish Shortcut and headed to the mini river trail.

The mini-river trail was pretty new to Marley who had been living on the reservation all his life and had been on almost every trail hundreds of times, he still didn’t know this one. Luckily there was a path through the trees and bushes. They stopped and took a breather.

“Crazy…crazy stuff adrenaline does, huh?” Marley said.

“Huh…?” Lila huffed.

“Never mind.”

“This is freaky.”

They stopped and thought, did they call the police? No, people were recording the explosion and probably called nine-nine-one. They were injured, sure. But no good reason to call. Not until they saw the bloody pairs of shoes in the trail ahead.

“Oh my god,” Lila said.

“I-I…gosh,” Marley paused. “These have to be Halloween decorations.”

“Halloween was nine months ago, Marley.”

“Well, then it’s just one of those weird pranks!” Marley shouted.

Marley knew that this was not some left-out Halloween decoration or some sick prank. This was somebody's bloody shoes.

“Oh my god, Marley,” Lila said, gasping as she pointed into the trees.

There, were five severed heads of people that had recently gone missing strung up in a tree.

Marley just stared and Lila screamed.

Also there in front of him were five headless and footless bodies strung in between trees.

Below them were words written in blood that read:

THIS TOWNS NEXT

“What-what do we do?” Marley said.

“Call nine one one, NOW,” Lila replied.

They indeed ended up calling nine-one-one on Marley's now super cracked phone. When they got there though, they were confused, very confused.

While getting patched up, an officer asked,

“So you know prank calls can result in a misdemeanor, right?”

“What do you mean?” Marley would reply.

“Well, it looks to us that there are no headless or footless bodies, no shoes with severed feet in them, and most importantly no five severed heads of Alex Johnson, Spencer Allen, Roy Joyce, Michelle Camp, and Austin Crowder.”

“What do you mean?”

“What we mean is there's nothing there. Gone, disappeared. Evaporated maybe?”

The bodies had disappeared.

Chapter 2

“There's nothing we can do to stop this but prevail.”

“I was just so worried, I thought you kids had died because I knew you were going to the gas station, and then on the broadcast it showed-”

“Mom. We're here, and we're fine.” Marley sat up and scooched over to the side of his hospital bed. “That's what matters.”

It was 1:27 AM in the Mason General Hospital, located in Washington. Marley and Lila had been driven there by ambulance though they had no serious injuries but did need to be put under for very painful stitches. Lila’s hospital bed was next to Marley’s, but empty.

“She’s just using the bathroom,” his mom said. “She's also in some pain.”

“How long have you guys been up?”

“About an hour and a half.”

“Sheesh.”

“The police are coming to question both of you.”

That caught Marley off guard, he thought they were done with the police for now, but he remembered how they still needed to question them a little. Lila walked into the room, with her usual outfit on, the tank top and jean jorts.

“Look who's awake,” Lila whispered.

“Marley Miller, in the flesh,” Marley said, taking a slight bow.

“We have to be quiet, it's 1:30 kids.”

“Yes, Mom.”

They all took a minute to chat, there were a couple of pamphlets on stitches and some soup. The soup was cold, so he just left it there.

“Well, I need to go check on Bear and make myself some dinner,” Marleys started at the door. “The police should be here any minute now, so be ready and answer truthfully.”

“Got it,” Lila said.

“I love you guys.”

“Ewww!” Lila and Marley both said as Marley’s mom was walking out the door.

They chatted for a good three minutes, about how Lila stole the stuff from Twin, and how their even alive. Marley was most confused about how one of the big propane canisters didn’t explode immediately along with the initial explosion, but instead took about five to explode.

Marley’s stomach gurgled, and without thinking he reached for the soup on the table next to him.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, it tastes like burning trash,” Lila whispered.

“How would you know?” Marley whispered back.

“Because I tried some, idiot.”

Marley giggled a little bit put his hand on his thigh, and then immediately threw it up.

“OW!” Marley shouted.

Lila laughed a little.

“You're gonna get us kicked out!” Lila whispered-yelled.

“I just hit a stitch! I have a right to yell, and besides, why would they kick out two kids who just came out of painful surgery,” Marley said.

“Yeah painful surgery my ass, I have one tiny stitch on my ankle,” Lila said.

“What,” Marley said. “They're charging my mom $1800 for both of us.”

“That's BS.”

“I know.”

Marley started checking over his body to see if he had any more stitches than the one on his thigh.

“I only got one too.”

“Yikes,” Lila said.

Then, there was a knock on the door frame. And there was the same officer who had talked to them when they called.

“Hey, you two.” The officer said.

They both gave her a confused and a little angry look for some reason. Instinct, maybe? She was tall, maybe 5 '9, she had blonde hair that was up in a tight bun, and a gun on her hip holster. She was also wearing a coffee-stained raincoat. It must be messy to stain a dark blue waterproof raincoat with coffee.

Maybe it was a Taser?

Either way, Marley was still tense, after seeing a reporter get turned into human pizza sauce, and seeing headless and footless bodies strung up in a tree, you know?

“I suppose your mother told me a couple of us were gonna interview you, right?”

“Think so, yep,” Lila said.

“Well don’t be getting too short on me yet,” The cop said, laughing a little. After she got a blank stare from the kids, she continued. “My name’s officer Brooke. Or Officer Jessie. Or just Jessie too. You get what I mean.”

They sat unblinking at her.

“Okay, I’m not the best with words, but I hope you guys are.” Officer Brooke said.

“So just to get this out of the way, we found the bodies.” As Officer Brooke said this, Marley and Lila gave off a quick sigh of relief and then continued. Well, we didn’t exactly find them, but that one farmer in the Valley who sells ice cream did. It gave him quite the scare.”

“Where did he find them?” Marley asked.

“One up in a tree, and the rest of them were scattered around the barn.”

“Yikes,” Lila said, shifting in her chair a little.

“Also, it didn’t take us too long to find the heads, somebody must have dragged them out while you guys were calling us. They seem to try and throw it into somebody else’s property because somebody's kids found them in Shelton.”

Marley and Lila gave her a confused look.

“How the hell do they get them to Shelton?” Lila asked, holding out her arms in a confused look and glancing towards Marley.

“We're assuming that they just picked them up and drove off without you guys noticing, and got there at about 7:00 or 8:00 PM,” Officer Brooke paused and took a breath. “The Shelton Police Department has also decided to pay off that eighteen-hundred-dollar medical for your Mom, she seems pretty stressed and all so we wanted to take some weight off her shoulders.”

“Thank you?” Marley said.

“Why’d you sound confused, son?” Officer Brooke asked.

“Why?” Lila said.

“Why did we pay off the bill,” Officer Brooke asked. “Us Moms have to stick together. Especially through times like these. I’ve got a kid of my own. Timmy’s his name.”

“Well, thank you,” Marley told her.

After that, Officer Brooke questioned them. She asked where they lived, what was their experience seeing the explosion first hand, and do they knew anything about Gary’s Goons.

“No. The flat-out answer is no. We're just as confused as you are on this whole crap show of the situation we're in right now.” Marley said, finally opening up and talking like a normal human being and not a robot.

“Okay. Well, I think I’m done here.”

Officer Brooke looked at them, sat up from her chair, and made her way to the doorway. She stopped, and turned around, putting her hand on the doorway.

“You guys should pack up, we're going to be driving you guys home today,” she paused and squinted at Marley.

“You're Teddy’s brother, right?”

That hit him hard.

For once in a while, he felt great. But this cop named Jessie Brooke of all people had to mention his brother.

“Yes?” Marley said.

“Oh, my husband reported on that scene. Was in charge of arresting the driver. One of the reasons why he quit was that job. He runs Camp Parsons in upper Seattle, a great winter camp you should visit sometime.”

Marley Miller had never been more confused in his entire life.

Did an officer I didn’t know just run an ad for her husband's camp by starting it off by mentioning somebody's dead brother? He thought to himself.

“Sure, we'll stop by, bye-bye!” Lila said quickly.

“You're a great sister, you. You know that?” Officer Brooke said.

“Thanks, we're gonna pack up now,” Lila said, quickly ending the conversation.

Officer Brooke waved, and then practically strutted out of that hospital room.

There wasn’t much to pack up though, as the only thing they wanted was the hospital socks, the news magazines that they knew Marley’s Mom would love, and the two crochet or knitted blankets the hospital provided.

They got home and Marley's Mom greeted them with a hug, and let them sit down and watch TV while she went to bed. Their dog Bear sat in between them. I think it finally introduced their dog, Bear.

Bear was a something-breed-rez-dog, that had mainly tan fur with his belly and tail being white. They adopted Bear about two months into the Raids, or June 2020. He was known around the Rez for being the sweetest big dog ever and probably had no survival instincts. He also survived eating these items:

STUFF BEAR HAS EATEN AND SURVIVED

An entire bag of Mini Kit Kats when they were left on the floor

Eating lotion that he somehow got into

Eating raw pancake mix

Way too many slugs

Chicken bones

Soap

About three of those fancy candies you get on Christmas

A golf ball

Honestly though, how the hell is this dog alive though, genuinely? Anyway, he was a good boy.

“God this guy needs a serious bath,” Lila said.

“Last time we put him in the tub he crapped himself and hid under my bed for two hours,” Marley replied, then turned back to the TV to watch Smiling Friends.

“Hey, I don’t want to sound old, but we should watch the news,” Lila asked.

“That sounds like a good idea, but it's what,” Marley looked over at the clock and his eyes widened.

“Jesus Christ, it’s 8:00 AM already?” Marley said.

“Guess so,” Lila said.

Marley switched the input to cable and went to King 5 News. Honestly, traffic and maybe a little bit of the broadcast from yesterday was the most they expected out of today's news.

“Thank you Jerry for the wonderful traffic you showed us, but we are at Shelton, live and on the scene with Misty and the military preparing for a possible raid,” The news reporter said.

Marley and Lilas's jaws dropped to the floor, closed, then back again.

It showed your stereotypical news reported in the library parking lot, showing helicopters and military vehicles driving to Downtown Shelton, setting up tents and whatever on the sidewalks you could see in the distance.

“Holy crap,” Lila said.

“You can say that again,” Marley said.

“Today is a big day for Shelton, as it has become a waypoint and a safehouse for the military to help prepare the people for the big 4th of July Raid.”

“Here is Timberland Library, now transformed into a shelter and food supplier.”

“Most of downtown Shelton’s stores have also been transformed into different suppliers and aids, we’ll go over them now.”

Safeway is now a gun supplier and mini hospital.

Builders First Choice was turned into a shelter.

The Subway was now a gear store.

All the other stores and whatnot were now either gear stores, shelters, or mini hospitals.

“Uptown shelton is the same thing, Walmart is now a gear store and a place where you can register to stop this mess or go help at other places that will be hit by the raid. This includes, oh my god,” she paused, and looked at the flier herself. “This includes - sorry, um this includes Olyimpia, the Skokomish Reservation, Fort Lewis, Bremerton, and Seattle. This is - oh my god, this is the biggest raid in the country…”

She continued, telling everybody that buses were going to be set out for people to go and get what they needed, and the Military would start to set up. This also included Skok. After this, it cut to what the soldiers themselves had to say about this. And lastly, it got to the general.

“This whole thing is going to be a tragedy, yes. But, we're going to live up to our country's name and fight back. We’re going to help anyone we can and work together no matter what race, religion, or anything. We’re going to make it out, because,” he took a breath and the camera zoomed in on him.

“There’s nothing we can do to stop this but prevail.”

Marley and Lila woke up Marley’s Mom after that, confused and scared, and told her about the news.

“So get dressed then, we're going to get our stuff.”

“But, we have all the stuff we need here.”

“Teddy - I mean Marley, I don’t care. Get dressed, nothing too extravagant.”

They got dressed, Lila finally changing her shirt to a Nirvana shirt, and wore a blue zip-up hoodie to hope nobody would ask her to name three songs and khaki corduroy pants. Marley put on a green hoodie, a TV girl shirt he got custom-made in the Capital Mall, and black Nike shorts.

They started the Prius and hopped in. It was a silent car ride mostly, containing a few oohs and aahs when they saw a fleet of tanks and Military trucks with big guns on the back of it.

God though, did this drive not feel real, for starters, it was the helicopters and the roads. They added signs in the middle of the road to prevent merging, which was weird. And every five or so seconds you’d see big cargo helicopters and a plane now and then passing over.

Then it was the Military.

Oh my god, this was so just like out of a movie. Shelton felt like every little sanctuary in apocalypse movies that had its flaws. Lines were backed for blocks to get into Walmart, let alone any store in uptown Shelton. There were brawls at what seemed like every block or street. People were gathered around barrel fires in the middle of what little alleys Shelton had or just flat-out in the middle of the sidewalk.

The air tasted like smoke and smelt even worse, just horrible. Like the weird smokey-plasticy almost garbage fire-type scent you can’t describe. It had only been about a day maybe - no maybe just hours of people knowing about the 4th of July Raid, and people were not taking the information lightly.

Signs are being held up by people saying, The end is near!!!, Fight for your lives, or You're not American. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

“This is so creepy, I hate it,” Lila said.

“How is this scary?” Marley said.

“How do you not find this scary?”

“Okay fine, I’m scared.”

“It’s fine, we're just going to be in and out.” Marley’s Mom said.

The line to Walmart was humongous, previously stated - but this was worse than getting into GameStop on the Nintendo Switch launch day.

“Good lord,” Marley’s Mom said. “I think maybe going back may have been a good idea.”

“But Mrs. Miller, we’ve come so far already, I think we should just full send,” Lila asked.

“Yeah Mom, I don’t want to go and drive back again without coming back with anything, it just feels weird, especially now.”

“I do kinda feel a weird sense of obligation to go in, but that line is so long.”

“Do we cut the line?” Lila said.

“No, the place is guarded up, we’d probably get kicked out.” His Mom said.

All of them sighed except Marley. He was thinking. His mom turned around to face Marley.

“You got any ideas, Baby?”

“I have one,” Marley paused and considered not even telling. “It’s just super risky.”

“Marley, please just talk,” Lila said.

“Okay, okay,” Marley took a deep breath and looked around. “You see the exit door, over there?”

“Yep,” Lila said.

“I do indeed.” Marley’s Mom said.

“It’s not guarded,” he paused and started counting. “Okay so every five to seven seconds, somebody comes out of that exit. I plan to sneak - or all of us, when somebody comes out and walks in.”

Marley’s Mom and Lila turned to look at each other. They nodded and thought over silently.

“Sounds good.” Marley’s Mom said, looking at Lila.

“Agreed,” Lila said. “Let’s get on with it.”

They marched over to the exit door and hid off to the side. It was an automatic door, which was honestly pretty stupid, but eventually, a family of two walked out of the store with their cart filled to the brim, with stuff almost falling out while they pushed their cart over the cracks.

They slid in like snakes, and in an instant, they were in what used to be the little plant section.

“Okay, we need a cart,” Lila said.

“Over there, cart return,” Marley replied.

Marley’s Mom laughed as she started to walk over there with the two kids.

“I’m so glad I’m with two smart kids that have good eyesight right now.”

They hurriedly picked out a cart slid it out of the Cart Snake, and started pushing. The reason why Walmart had such a big line, is because it was like an everything store. They hurried over to the gear supply section, where it showed a selection of Bag Lights that you could slide into a sewn-in patch on your bag or wrapping. They grabbed four, one extra just in case. They saw ammo for a pistol, and a mag set and grabbed a lot of those and slid them into their cart. They grabbed and set down and tossed and slid and threw almost everything you could think of that you could survive. Even a bag of Hostess powdered donuts. And also, everything was free.

After learning that they may or may not have cut the line to get roast beef and ham Deli Slices.

There was no security camera, hopefully.

The drive back was filled with what radio music they had, and telling what was their favorite thing they got at the store.

“Honestly, mine had to have been that tin foil blanket thing,” Lila said.

“Mine is the bag of Hostess we got,” Marley said.

“Mine was the sweater I got.” Marley’s Mom said.

“The one that says Number 1 Mom in Comic Sans font?”

“You know it.” Marley’s Mom said.

Good lord, after a long day of speed shopping and recovery from minor stitches, everybody in that house including Bear for some reason was burned out. They feasted though, and Bear even got some raw ground beef and a side of raw egg yolk on his plate, which was for some reason, his favorite food.

Things were starting to look good for the squad of Bear, Marley, Lila, and Marley’s Mom, and maybe tomorrow would be the same. Hopefully.

Chapter 3

“We're going to run out of time.”

Marley woke up to the hiss of Lila’s leaky air mattress, making the entire room smell like rubber.

“Lila?” Marley whispered.

There was no answer.

There was the slight hum of a helicopter passing over - or was it a plane? It was flying down low too, as the sound suddenly got very loud. Marley, confused by the sound, got up. He was wearing the same outfit from yesterday, the Terminator shirt, and the khaki shorts, just minus the coat. He walked out of the room and went to the living room.

“Parental guardian?” he shouted. And once again, there was no response.

“Please don’t be dead!” he said, then giving off a nervous laugh.

He stood on the carpeted living room floor and started messing with the bands on his braces.

“Where could they be?” Marley thought aloud.

Bear grumbled to show he was thinking.

“OH MY GOD - What the? How? Why - why do you just teleport it's not okay!” Marley shouted and fell back, landing on his back. Bear just stood in place and yawned at him. Marley stood off, dusting the invisible dust off himself, and shook his head at Bear while walking to the kitchen. Bear followed.

Marley opened the freezer and saw a garlic-crust pepperoni pizza Hot Pocket. He walked over to the counter grabbed a plate from the cabinet above him, placed it down, and started to unwrap the plastic around his breakfast. He always took time to make his breakfast perfect, but today was a different day. Like how he just slid on the pocket without making sure it’s evenly covered. He set the timer for 2:00 minutes sat down on the couch and went on his phone.

Maybe that's how today would play out - different. He’d just have to find out along with eight hundred military personnel and civilians. Scrolling through TikTok on his newly cracked iPhone 11, he came across a video about the Raids and Gary Springfield.

“America, we're going through some tough times right now,” Gary paused and smacked his lips in an old man way. “But, if you elect me, I can put a stop to this, once and for all. And we will make America alive again!”

Marley tossed - no threw his phone across the room and hit the closet door. He was breathing heavily, confused and angered.

“HE DID NOT JUST USE THAT AS A CAMPAIGN POINT!” Marley yelled.

Bear barked in agreement.

“You tell 'em’ Bear,”

The microwave ding went off, and Marley jogged over to it. He grabbed that Hot Pocket and wrangled into into his stomach like a cowboy, and tossed the pocket part into the garbage. Then, he heard a boom. It sounded like it was coming from the school.

“I think that's my call,” Marley said.

He walked over to his shoe basket fished out his Converse and tied them on tight. He looked for a hoodie on the coat rack and picked out a Handful of Demons zip-up hoodie he forgot about. He walked over to the closet picked up his phone and then walked out the door.

“Must be my lucky day,” Marley said, laughing a little and zipping up the hoodie.

He stepped out of the house and looked around, he saw his neighbors getting in their cars and speeding off to where they heard the sound.

I’ll take the bike. He thought to himself, walking over towards it and hopping on. It was Grandpa Fred’s bike, and the thing he remembered about him right before he died was giving him this bike, and telling him to take good care of it.

It was a pretty one too, purple, and had all the gears you could ever need and even had a basket on it. It was a good bike. He switched it to the highest gear and made his way over to his neighbor's yard. He was going to take another shortcut. This one was one of his favorites since it included a bumpy road and mountain bike terrain. He pedaled over to their yard and didn’t look back. He was on the grass now, just past the trampoline, and was over to the fence where the shortcut would be, but it wasn’t there.

“You have to be kidding me.” He said aloud.

The gate had been fixed up. You see, the shortcut was a hole in his neighbor's fence that connected to the sidewalk leading to the school, and for some reason, he decided to patch it up.

“Sorry neighbor,” Marley said, wheeling his bike over to where the hole had once been.

“Grandpa Fred, if you're watching me in the pearly gates, forgive me.”

Marley walked back with both hands on the handlebars of the bike and ran towards the gate with full force. He crashed into the gate, just hard enough for him and his bike to make it through, without them both landing on the concrete first.

“Karma...” Marley said, grunting and getting up.

He shook it off and put his bike upwards and started biking towards the school. It was very surreal, biking to the school on this cold morning. Marley's exposed stitch was bumping up on the cold metal of the bike's frame. The wind blowing onto him made the little bit of sweat on his forehead cold and moist. His zip-up hoodie flapped around his body as he moved at a steady pace towards the school.

The crowd gathered around in the parking lot was coming into view, and they were focused on something as they stood unmoving, heads pointed up into the sky.

“Huh…” Marley said as he started to pedal slower.

He came to a stop at the school, using his foot to turn the kickstand down and set it on the ground as he walked to the crowd. There, was a plane in the sky rapidly descending towards them from the hill near the school. Marley sifted into the crowd and looked in awe as the plane started to catch fire midair.

“Oh my god…” Marley said, covering his mouth and walking towards the edge of the crowd so he could get a better view.

The plane was banking to its right, as the engine on that wing caught fire, and was starting to spin midair. If only Marley had his phone, he thought. He put his hand in his hoodie pockets and stood on the road. He took his hands out of his pockets to warm himself up, but something dropped out of his pocket. His phone.

“Holy, my luck today…” He muttered to himself and turned on his phone. He then pointed the phone at the plane and pressed record.

Everybody watched in horror and silence as the plane spun faster and faster, and then one wing detached, shattering in midair and disappearing into the tree line, the plane growing closer. The nose of the plane started to catch fire and light up, and the back wing started to crumble mid-air. Then there was the roar, the roar of that one engine still pushing, growing louder as it got closer to the hill, and then everybody realized. The plane was going to crash into the Fireworks lot.

This was not some freak accident, no. As the plane grew closer it was an army supply plane that was landing almost everywhere in Washington to deliver supplies. On the sides of the plane, were words written in blue paint:

GARY’S LITTLE SURPRISE

They were also crashing into the fireworks lot for a big fiery show of death.

The plane bumped and skidded on the hill, and the middle of it separated on top of the hill and exploded - but the explosion was yelllow. Everybody gasped and shrieked in fear, and then people started finally running and getting out of the way as the plane wing crashed into the crowd of people. Torsos detached from their legs flying up in the air, as the plane wing flew into the crowd, detaching itself from the plane. The Fireworks lot lit up setting mortars and other fireworks off, hitting others in the crowd, trees, the plane - basically anything near the lot.

Then, a big firework went off and went directly into the plane, still going for a good few seconds - then exploding right in the middle of the plane. There was a very loud screaming sound - it wasn’t human thought. It was the sound of canisters bouncing around in the plane, then exploding. More gas came out of the plane, and now with a giant gap in it - more canisters flew out with a yellow trail of gas following them as they exploded mid-air and into the air. Some hit the crowd, some hit people.

They exploded, making the air thick with this gas, and people started screaming.

Marley thrashed through the yellow gas, trying to find his bike amidst the gas. He started coughing too, and his hands started to hurt. His hands were covered by his coat, and his eyes were water, making it very difficult to see. He tripped over something and landed on the asphalt road. He looked behind him and saw someone choking on air, and starting to cough up blood.

He pointed his camera at this person, writhing on the ground, and thankfully the phone ran out of storage. He screamed and dropped his phone and tried to get up.

Then something - or someone grabbed him, and put their hand over his mouth. Good, he knew it was a human - but who? He screamed and thrashed around, biting the finger of whoever was holding him. Crying and trying to break free, Marley was then greeted instead by a soldier with a gas mask on. The gas mask had a clear protective cover, and you could tell he was a little bit angry with a bitten finger but had worried eyes. Green worried eyes. He had another gas mask on his belt, and handed it to Marley, which he immediately put on. He gasped, breathing in the semi-fresh air and looking at the soldier. He was standing up already, holding his hand and looking at his finger, which had a little bit of fat hanging out of it, and was dripping blood. The soldier looked up and motioned for him to come with him. Marley shook his head, still crying. The soldier got closer to him and he backed up.

His fight or flight response was going crazy, he was frozen and fighting at the same time. He saw his phone on the ground, picked it up, and slid it into his shorts pocket. The soldier then lunged at him, and Marley responded by getting tackled, and then punching at him, scratching, biting too - just trying to get him off him. The soldier grabbed his arms and started shoving him into the concrete.

Shove,

Scream, kick.

Shove,

Scream, punch, but miss.

Shove,

Scream, kick

Shove,

Kick.

Shove,

Punch.

Shove,

No movement.

Marley looked at the soldier, wide-eyed, and the soldier looked at him as calmly as he could. Marley was going to comply or he was probably going to going to be left out here.

The soldier stood up pulled Marley up, and started to run to the school. The soldier ran very fast, and Marley could barely keep up, and the soldier was grabbing his upper arm, not even his hand. There was nothing to grip to - just run. Marley tripped midair, and skidded a little, but turned his hand over to grab the soldier's arm. They ran, and they ran. Finally, after about thirty seconds of running, Marley saw the stairs of the School. They came to a stop at the door, and more soldiers with gas masks were at the door holding rifles, and they let him in. Marley was in the third-grade hallway, and just like years before - he threw up by a locker.

The soldier took off his mask, and put his hands on his hips, breathing heavily, watching Marley throw up the hot pocket he ate earlier.

“You’re a fighter,” the soldier said.

Marley just looked at him.

‘Not the time?” the soldier asked.

“No shit Sherlock,” Marley said, walking away and wiping his mouth his arm. He walked fast and made his way to the commons. His first thought was walking out - but no there was gas out there. Besides, the commons was transformed into a mini infirmary!

“What?” Marley said, looking in awe as people were being pushed into little green tents in neat lines. He started walking around and saw Lila getting checked into one of the open tents. They both saw each other at the same time and shouted each other’s names.

“MARLEY!”

“LILA!”

Marley jogged over to where she was, she was back in her purple tank top, and there were little burns scattered around her arms and legs.

“Good lord, are you okay?” Marley asked.

“Yes, it's no biggie.”

“Well, this looks bad.”

“I know, Marley.”

“Are you two brother and sister?” The doctor asked while wrapping up a medium-sized burn on Lila’s shoulder.

They both just looked at him.

“What?” The doctor asked, and starting to wriggle a safety pin onto the gauze wrapping.

“Hey also, if you were exposed to the mustard gas then I should check you for burns.”

“What?”

“I said I need to check you for burns-”

“No, was that mustard gas, like really?” Marley asked.

“Yes,” the doctor responded. “dichloro-diethyl sulfide.”

Marley was surprised and not at the same time. He was surprised that mustard gas could still be legally created after it was BANNED BY THE GeNEVEA CONVENTION. But, he was not surprised that Gary Springfield would go to these extreme measures to govern a country.

Turns out Marley had some burns, two on his back, and three on each arm varying in size. The doctor handed them a letter after Marley and Lila got patched up. They ignored it and told them they would read it as soon as they could, and instead shoved it inside Marley's coat pocket. They looked around the school and saw in the gym another mini infirmary, the upstairs was sleeping quarters, and all of the downstairs classrooms were used as weapon rooms or supply areas. There were a few cafeteria tables in the commons, and that's where they ate. After a quick dinner, Marley headed into the gym to take a shower.

“Well, I hope the water’s not brown,” Marley said.

“They probably fixed it. Probably,” Lila said.

The gym shower water has always, always been a dirty brown or gray. Hopefully, they had it running for a little bit. Marley walked in, towels and clothes to change into in hand. He walked on the wet locker room floor and made his way to the showers. They were little stalls, five of them bunched together in a little corner. Another man was in the shower, it was the soldier from earlier. Not wanting to see, All of that, Marley thought to himself, he quickly hurried into the stall closest to the exit and far away from the soldier. He set his towels down on the little bench in the stall and went into the shower. The shower base was wet with thankfully clear water and a little bit of hair. He stepped in and turned the water to the highest setting. The water washed over him like rain, but he jumped. His back rang with pain, and he put his arm around to check. He pulled his hand back and there was some blood, and mushy pale skin on his hand. He grimaced and felt some more, trying to find the source, and then bingo–he drove his nail into his burns.

Marley was a war fanatic and knew almost everything about both world wars, he knew mustard gas was used to, well to kill people. He also knew that it could make you drown on land by filling your lungs with moisture if prolonged exposure were to occur. But he didn’t know it caused a lot of burns and blistering. He yelled a curse, pulled his hand out in front of him to look at, a blood-covered pointer finger, and put another hand on his back where the burn was, this time being careful not to stab it with his nail. He held his hand up to the shower head, watching the hot water mix with the blood and trail down his arm until it disappeared onto his body with all the others. That’s what he was worried about at the moment too, like how maybe he would end up as a forgotten water droplet that would disappear and never be thought about again. Death never scared him, but as the feeling lingered, he didn’t want to die at fourteen in some background character in an election campaign plan.

He put his arm down moved the shower curtain and grabbed his shampoo flicking open the travel-size bottle and squirting some in his hands. He clapped his hands together and rubbed the shampoo so it was even on both hands, then took his right hand and started to wash his ends, then with his left hand did the rest. He then reached for his conditioner, grabbed it, and did the same. He then washed his body, and after that, he stood in the warm water. Looking at his burns and some blisters on his arms. The worst of it was a burn in his armpit. He decided he was in the shower trying to be mysterious for long enough, and turned the water off. He dried off with a towel, first his hair, then his body. He put on his clothes, the ones he was wearing in the mustard gas just got finished washing before he took a shower, he slid them on, his zip-up being softer than ever, his terminator shirt got a little more faded, but that was okay, his khaki pants felt…khaki? His socks were warm still and he slid them on, then tied his Converse on. He stepped out, but he ran into the soldier, head-on. His head crashed into the soldier's chest, and Marley fell to the ground. He looked up, the soldier now out of his army jacket, in a brown t-shirt, had no hat on, it was just his crew cut now. He still had his army camo pants on, and he had his toothbrush in his mouth. Marley went wide-eyed. He blushed–maybe out of embracement, maybe not, and quickly acted like he sliced his lip open by covering his mouth and digging his nail into his lip, which hurt a lot more than he thought it would.

“Hey, it’s you,” The soldier said.

“Yep.”

The soldier held out his hand, and Marley quickly grabbed it and pulled himself up.

“I’m Louis.”

“And I’m Marley.”

“Nice to meet you, Marley.”

“Cool yep bye,” Marley said, rushing out of the room and into the gym.

Marley saw the rock climbing wall mat was down, and Lila and a couple of their school friends were talking about something. Marley walked over to the blue mat where Lila and their friends were and sat down.

“Speak of the devil,” One of the four said. Then, everybody just turned to them.

“Last time I checked, Roy, this isn’t the 1800s, we shouldn’t be using that word anymore.”

“Well, whatever Molly,” Roy said.

“Well then let’s try again,” Molly said.

“Well then that's so fetch!” Roy said.

“That’s like, a million times worse.” One of the girls said.

“Stop trying to make fetch happen!” all of them said.

They all laughed, Roy slapped his knee, and Molly gave off her loud laugh, Lila cackled like an old man, and Marley doubled over. It was the funniest reminder of how little things like this made them laugh.

“God that is so stupid…but Marley we were just talking about you, you still have that note right?”

“You mean the letter that he almost let go in the wash? I have it.” Lila said

“You should open it because me and Roy got one we were getting checked out.”

“Oh cool. Hey, why are you guys even here?” Lila asked, sifting through her pockets to find the note.

“Oh, well I saw Roy in Shelton with his grandparents, and since I was here helping out at the school because Mom and Dad are in Hawaii, we decided to come here,” Molly told her.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure my grandparents are either super pissed or each died of a heart attack or something,” Roy said shifting in his spot a little. “Did you find it yet?”

“No, Marley do you got it?” Lila asked.

“Maybe,” Marley said, taking his hand off his lip, blood starting to drip onto the blue mat.

“Oh,” Molly grimaced.

“Jesus, Marley!” Roy said, backing up a little.

“Oh, Marley you got a little something on your lip there.” “What?” Marley asked.

He looked down at his hand and saw it was practically soaked with blood.

“Oh yikes,” Marley said, wiping his hands on the mat.

“Oh my god, you're just making it worse,” Molly said.

“Here, Marley. Tissues.” Lila said, pulling a clump of tissues from Marley’s backpack.

“Oh you horrible person,” Marley said, smiling, and taking the tissues. They were the ones Lila had yoinked back at Twin.

“What?” Molly asked.

“Okay, let’s cut to the chase.”

“Yes. Marley?” Marley shuffled around in his coat pockets trying to find the letter, and reached into his back pocket, grabbing the envelope that was a little crumpled. He broke the seal with his pointer finger, and Molly grabbed Roy and her note and also broke the seal.

“Ahem,” Marley said.

United States Human Resources

In response to recent unexpected attacks by a political leader, the US Human Resources Department, in collaboration with the Army, seeks dedicated individuals from Washington, Colorado, California, and Oregon to protect our communities and cities. These attacks have instilled fear, and sadly death. Necessitating a unified effort to ensure neighborhood safety and security is our biggest goal with this program, and we need your help. With Army support, we aim to establish a strong defense network to counteract these threats.

Objectives:

Community Defense: Protect your neighborhood and ensure resident safety.

Rapid Response: Quickly react to political disturbances.

Strategic Planning: Help develop plans to counter and mitigate attacks.

Responsibilities:

Monitoring: Watch for unusual activities and possible attacks.

Reporting: Use your check-in sheet to report any suspicions.

Community Outreach: Engage neighbors to help protect us.

Desired Qualities:

Quick Thinkers: Promptly assess and respond to situations, while alerting others.

Tech-Savvy: Use technology for incident reporting, tracking, and attacking.

Community-Minded: Strong sense of responsibility.

Firearms Experience: Handle firearms safely, and be good at it.

Improvised Weaponry: Create defensive tools if needed.

Benefits:

Tuition: Anyone under 17 will be getting university/or college tuition.

Support: Access to resources and community.

Reward: $1,500 for contributors.

Compensation: $2,000 for injury.

Interested individuals may visit our website at www.saveourcommunity.org to complete the application form. For any inquiries, please contact us at 1-800-DEFEND-US. Additionally, in-person sign-ups are available at the following locations throughout July 3 - July 6th.

Hood Canal School District, located in Mason County, WA.

Thurston County Elementary School, located in Thurston County, WA.

Thurston County High School is located in Thurston County, WA.

Fort Lewis, located in Pierce County, WA.

United, we are stronger. Join us today in this vital effort and be part of the United Force. Let us come together in the spirit of darkness and death, standing firm to defend America and the values we hold dear.

Please, no dogs or pets you bring here, we will have to go through a lengthy qualification as they may die in the field.

“Holy shit,” Lila said.

“We are being recruited by the Army.”

It was 8:37 PM by then, and they decided to go to bed. They all settled down in

their 7th grade English Classroom, and went to bed, for the most part. Mustard gas burns make it pretty difficult for back-only sleepers like Marley to get some rest. Tomorrow was going to be difficult, filled with training and whatever else July 3rd, 2024 would entail.

Chapter 4

“We’ve come this far already, it can’t just be for nothing.”

“Well, he’s a good dog! And besides, he's probably all scared at home writhing because he hasn’t been fed yet!” Lila screamed at one of the military officers.

“We’re sorry, we can’t get him out of there, the gas also might have killed him too.”

“Don’t you ever, ever say that my dog has died. He knows how to stay put. Please, he's right down the road,” Marley said, slamming his fists on the pop-up table the soldier was on.

“I’m sorry we can’t let you out there–”

“Bullshit!” Lila yelled, pushing the table and walking away. “How come there's so many dogs in the kennels then! Bear would make a hell of a lot of improvement than those dogs!”

“We're sorry. We can’t. It’s 5:30 AM and patrols haven’t even been set out.”

Yes, it was 5:30 AM, and yes, Lila and Marley were desperately trying to convince them that their dog could rip out somebody's throat so he could fight with him. And oh he could, Bear killed a man at only five months old and was put in the kill shelter for it, but hours before he would have been put down, Marley’s parents adopted him.

“You know what, America the country of the free, so like, were going,” Lila said, turning around, and walking towards the door.

“You can’t just do that!” The soldier yelled at them.

Marley started towards Lila and gave the soldier the finger. That sigh given by that soldier could be heard throughout the country.

They walked out, not speaking to try not to wake people up. The air was warm still from the recently put-out plane fire, and the wreckage was still there. It wasn’t concerning anymore, at the moment at least. It was like a cheap jumpscare in a horror movie. Like it would jump or wake up when they would walk by it. Thankfully, that plane wasn’t a sleeping bear or a zombie, it was no prop, no special effects. It was real, and thankfully not a living creature but a Boeing C-17 Globemaster that was wrecked and burnt beyond repair. They walked down the sidewalk, new cracks were splotched around the sidewalk from yesterday's fiasco. They didn’t clean out all of the bodies either, some were still lying on the ground, their face burnt and covered in blisters as the skin on their arms was peeling off in the wind, curling up showing muscle like the wood curls you get after carving.

“Good lord is that disgusting,” Lila said, grimacing and covering her nose at the stench.

“Yeesh,” Marley said. “And look, they go out further down the road too.”

“Hope your mom got out of Olympia yesterday,” Lila said.

“Hope so too,” Marley said, looking down and giving a sigh.

Yesterday, at about the same time as Marley and Lila were attacked with mustard gas, so was Olympia. About fifteen minutes after the news, Marley's Mom was out on the road and was also struck by the traffic. She was on the bridge near the Haggen’s and the McDonald’s when six Ilyushin IL-76 passenger planes came over in a fleet, of course on fire and dropping even larger mustard gas bombs over Olympia. People in front thinking drove fast, as a plane crashed into Hagens, one collided with a news helicopter that was reporting on the scene from above. One dropped into the Lacy Costco, another into the Walmart, and another went nose-diving into the Lowes, and the last spun out into the Capital. A real shit show, honestly.

Marley and Lila’s world was changing into something beyond belief, along with 344 million others, but besides the point, they were just fourteen and fifteen years old trying to live their life amidst all of this. Others thought otherwise.

“I just don’t think dumping mustard gas onto towns and cities – well, I just think he's going too far.”

“Well obviously, he's just trying too hard to achieve something that's almost unachievable for horrible, shitty people like him.”

“Yeah, I mean, it's just…” Lila said, pausing and looking at the trees.

“Like listen, I know he’s human but he’s done so much to the point where he’s just not human anymore. I’d at least accept a little realization of what he’s done so far,” Marley said, looking at Lila gazing at the trees, wide-eyed and jaw dropped.

“What is it?” Marley asked, turning towards to see a group of people, no – two people in the trees up high, at least twenty or thirty feet, but that's beside the point. They weren’t just up there to climb, or ponder about life. There was no life left in them – as they were hanging.

“Holy shit,” Lila said.

“Oh my god, I – I think I know those people,” Marley paused, just in awe. “There the uh, the old couple that yelled at me and you for lighting fireworks that one time…”

Lila covered her mouth, looking at them. Then something else caught her eye. Down the road in trees or on the ground were people that had given up. You can guess how most of them had left I’ll leave it up to you. There were others, a family of four, six, including their cat and dog, lying asphyxiated on the ground, they were all hand in hand, connected in a circle, with the cat and the dog lying only on the lap of the two kids. The dog and cats were still alive, probably not alive inside – even with an estimated two-year-old knowledge of both the cat and dog they still understood what had happened. The family had probably not known that it was mustard gas – or they went outside to look and didn’t have enough time to run away.

They walked towards them, the dog waking up from its slumber clutching onto what little body heat remained on the bodies, and just simply whined at them as they passed by. The dog's ears were down, and the cat was sitting down by the dog, rubbing its face on their neck as they passed by.

“Marley…Oh my god,” Lila said, passing by the dog and cat on top of the bodies, covering her mouth and crying.

“Oh my god…this…gosh,” Marley said. They paused and looked, then Marley pointed at the gate to cut through the gravel lot, which was piles of gravel connected to the Headstart.

The walk was sad, seeing all the people there on the ground, and with every step Marley hoped and hoped that he had shut all the windows, and the doors, and made everything safe so Bear would be fine. The dirt squished under their feet as they walked onto the dirt parking lot near the education building. But the lights were on?

The lights were always on, right?

Marley always knew the lights would be on, even if nobody was there.

“The lights are on,” Lila said, walking by the Education Building.

“Well, the lights are always on.” Marley thought, still walking by.

“That’s what I thought,” Lila thought.

It may or may have not been their brain, the stress, or anything, but they heard noises. Talking, laughing. They each thought it was just them hearing it, and in response, they moved on. But, last night, Gary Goons, or what they call themselves, The Resistance had moved back onto the reservations since most of everybody had moved into the school for safety.

“We're coming up on the house,” Marley said, looking around.

“God this is so eerie without somebody speeding down the road for no reason…” Lila said, also looking around.

Then in the bus shed, there was something, or somebody inside of it. Marley quickly pulled Lila with him as he ducked down, Lila confused asked, or tried to ask, ‘What?’ before Marley quickly covered her mouth. He pointed towards the bus shed, and Lila nodded. There was a pipe on the ground for some reason, and next to it was a little de-weeding tool. Lila crawled over to the pipe and dragged it to herself, then picked it up with both hands and stood up. They slowly walked towards the person inside the bus shed, slumped over, and…maybe–just maybe alive. Each step sounded louder as they moved their way over, finally making it just in range to peer inside. Marley stepped inside and was greeted with a foul stench, and turned toward Lila, covering his nose. He looked back, at yelled, arms flailing in the air.

“HOLY–OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!” Marley yelled, moving back to the road.

“Oh my god…” Lila said, peering back into the bus shed to look for herself. “OH MY GOD!”

There was a man in there, his head was just his chin now, which was blown off by a shotgun, judging the broken window behind him. He didn’t do this to himself thankfully, but somebody else did.

“HEY, WHOSE THERE? IS THAT YOU TERRY?” Somebody off in the distance yelled.

Well, for starters, none of their names were Terry, and it was someone they didn’t know. Four silhouettes came into view, and they were talking about something. More importantly, it was the gear Gary’s people had been using.

“Shit, Lila.”

“Go to hell you pieces of shit!” Lila said, getting up and screaming at them.

“Holy, shit what are you on? You–oh my god…” Marley said, looking at the squad of people, looking around for who said that. They then saw Marley and Lila. They looked like they wanted to kill a fourteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old mercilessly, judging by how they aimed their rifles at the pair.

“Get up Marley!” Lila said, grabbing Marley’s arm, and starting to run with him.

The people started raining bullets at them, and since they were further away from them, giving Marley and Lila an advantage. They hit anything other than them, windows, trees, the asphalt behind their feet, gates, through the bus shed. Marley even thought for a second that Gary recruited some of the shittiest aims in the country, right until a bullet cut through the edge of Marley's arm. Marley toppled over, left elbow first. He got up quickly with both his arms and fell on his left side. He tried again, and the same thing. Bullets were still being fired, but they stopped, just for them to reload. Lila ran back towards Marley seeing he was hurt, and quickly picked him up without a thought.

They ran down the court as fast as they could, Marley’s left arm flailing as they booked it into Marley’s front yard. They got up to the porch, burst through the door and Lila quickly looked at the clock.

“It’s been thirty minutes Marley,” Lila said.

“Why the hell does that matter?” Marley asked.

“Training starts.”

“Well, who cares!”

Marley threw down his arms and winced.

“Holy shit Marley, your arm. I think your elbows dislocated,” Lila said, pointing to his elbow that was sticking out a little.

“Well then – I don’t know!” Marley said, clutching his arm.

“Listen, I did this a couple of times and if we're gonna escape the firing squad then we need to go.”

“How–what?” Marley said, clutching his elbow.

“Just give me your arm.”

“But–OH MY GOD!” Marley screamed as a bear appeared beside them. Marley lurched back, and Lila took this as the perfect opportunity to quickly shove his elbow back into place.

“Ouch, oh my god–how…” Marley said, moving his elbow and trying to flex his arm.

Bear lurched off the couch, barking and growling at something near the kitchen. There was a soldier, who probably just came back from taking a piss in their bathroom. Marley and Lila moved up as Bear locked onto the soldier's leg, thrashing wildly as the soldier screamed. Lila went over to the pantry where the soldier was and quickly swung her pipe at the soldier's head, shattering the clear mask he was wearing. His head knocked to his left, hitting the door frame which had no door, and landing on the tile.

Bear made quick work and lunged at the soldier's now exposed face with little bits of the shrapnel from the mask. Bear ripped at the nose, tore at his eyes, and ripped off his mouth and his lips, leaving his face to look like crappy ground beef.

“You go Bear!” Lila shouted at the now blood-soaked Bear who barked in response.

The soldier coughed up the last bits of his life in the form of blood. Marley walked over to them and gave them a thumbs up, trying to gain back the feeling in the lower half of his left arm. He finally made a fist and nodded at Lila.

“Is it better?” Lila asked.

“You know it,” Marley said, dapping up Lila and laughing a little.

“Oh man…that’s good – oh shit, Marley!” Lila said, pointing towards the front door.

Marley and Bear hurried over, Marley yelling and looking at the soldier who just barged in through the door, surprised. He dug the de-weeder into the soldier’s sunglasses, stabbing his eye. The soldier screamed as the tool didn’t go through the brain as planned. Bear pitched in and started to tear up the soldier's right leg, and the soldier started squirming flailing his arms Marley responded by grabbing the soldier's pistol, pointing it at his chin,, and firing.

15 days ago

FLASH

“Mr. Springfield, what do you have to say about these raids, and to the people that are saying you are the cause?” A reporter asked.

“Nothing, no comment,” Gary Springfield said, laughing and clapping his hands awkwardly.

The reporters started trying to ask questions again, and Mr. Springfield didn’t want anymore and gave them a rough stare before signaling them to get out. He sat in his chair and started sifting through papers on his desk. He turned on the paper shredder and one by one, he put them in. He passed through maybe fifteen papers, before seeing one that caught his eye.

He slid that one out of the stack, and set it down on his desk. Gary was again in the Oval Office going through the

“Tough crowd, eh?” Gary said, getting up and walking toward one of the soldiers inside the office with him, just in case somebody tried to pull some crap.

“Yes sir,” The soldier said, keeping in a very straight position.

“You know this isn’t Great Britain? You don’t have to act like a royal guard. Also, shred the rest of the papers on the desk.”

“Sir, their government documents about the raids, sir.”

“Sorry, do you want to keep your job, or keep the wife and kids alive? Hope so.” Gary said.

“Sir – uh, yes.”

“Great,” Gary said, patting the soldier's shoulder and smiling.

“I’ve got to take a plane to a big, big meeting,” Gary paused and smiled. “We're going to win. Everybody can be a winner if they try hard enough, you know that?”

The soldier just nodded. Gary patted him on the soldier again, grabbed his suitcase, and exited the room.

Gary headed down the hallway, his blue suit and white shirt shuffled with every step. He had a very calm expression, speedwalking to where a helicopter lay in the grass. Once he got there, they flew him to Force One. The helicopter blades got slower, and they shut the engine off. Gary stepped out, that briefcase still in hand and walked over to the plane. He saulted the pilots and started up the stairs. There in front of him, were four men with either a gas mask or a clown mask.

“Boy’s,” Gary said, setting down the briefcase on the coffee table.

“Where's our pay big guy?” One of the men asked. They had a Ghost ski mask on, and his under eyes were covered in black war paint.

“In there,” Gary said, nodding to the briefcase. “Forty million”

All of the men went for it, before Gary pulled the briefcase back, before shaking his finger.

“I get to decide if you get it.”

“But we’ve done so much for you,” One of them said.

“I don’t give a shit,” He said, laughing.

“Okay people, what's the plan?”

“Well, here's what we're thinking.”

“We're going to send Skull’s group out to Olympia on the second and Sam’s to Seattle since he has the biggest group on the fourth. Me and Calvin are heading to Fort Lewis on the second, and we have some planes stolen that were filling up with mustard gas to distract them.” A man in a clear gas mask said.

“Were crashing six or so over Olympia, one in Seattle, one at Shelton, and one more at Skokomish. Then, here's the fun part, we're all going to the Shelton place the day after. That's going to be the one that spread out the most. It’s going to Shelton to Skokomish, and anything else in a twenty or so mile radius around it.” The man in the glass man stopped and nudged toward the man named Calvin.

“Your job is to act like you made an agreement with us on the fourth of July, that the military or something should start packing up and that America can spend its fourth like normal. Then we attack.”

“I mean, that sounds great, but why the mustard gas?”

“It’ll keep them confused, awaiting another attack while we go for Fort Lewis. The news won’t be getting out since we're only going to kill who we have to and use all the trained people there to help with Shelton. We're going to turn the enemies to allies,” Calvin said, nudging to the man next to him.

The plane started to turn on and started pulling right, quickly taking off.

“We’ve also got hold of those fancy passenger planes from Russia or whatever, we still haven’t found the use of them yet, but we are for sure going to use them somehow.”

“Tell him about the bombs!” One of them said.

The man named Sam picked up.

“We're using some bombs we’ve gotten from all the other places we’ve raided, firework bombs, actually bombs, landmines, crates of dynamite that explode when dropped from planes. We’re going to use them on the stragglers that are trying to get out, and then on the rest of our men. It’s going to be one hell Fourth of July firework show, that’s for sure.”

The plane buckled and moved as it hurried to its destination.

“Well boys, you’ve earned it. $10 million each. Now I’ve got a big meeting in Michigan, so just stay on the plane because the pilots will drive you back. Thank you, again. This will look great on my campaign.”

Closure, and thank you for reading!

* * *

Well, what would’ve happened after this, is the trio would return to the school after getting in a intense shootout with the raiders stationed at the now desolated houses. They would end up sleeping, waking up early the next day, July 4th, and as mentioned in the 15 days earlier flashback part of the manuscript, they would have called off the big Washington raid, and would give everybody some compensation money for there struggles, and what not. As they would be going home, and moving everything they had moved from the school a couple days before, there would be heavy gunfire and explosions, and little planes and big planes would start falling from the sky. Lila and Marley hopped into one of the cars still there in their driveway, and using there lesser driving skills made it almost out Skok. There cars tire would end up getting hit by a bullet fired by a raider, causing them to swerve into the parking lot of the half destroyed Tribal Clinic there, before a small plane drove into the further left side of the building, into a gas tank that would end up actually taking them out.

Marley would have been thrown out of the truck as it skidded, rolled over and almost flew from the explosion into the old baseball feild – and landing directly onto some shrapnel from the explosion. Lila would get out of the car, same with Bear, and found Marley bleeding out on the debris. Marley, coughing up blood, would tell them to leave him behind and escape.

And so Lila did, and along with bear they went out through the river and ended up making it to Hunters Farm*, finding a working truck there and driving to Bremerton, as it was like a refugee base. Evidently, the real Millatary and not the stationary one on the reservation would end up dropping a bomb on the center of the reservation, almost right where Marley’s brother had died. And so, Marley became just another body left to piece together by the recovery team – another lost to violence, war, and crime. I was also planning there to be a closure chapter, almost like an epilouge but not quite, if you know what I mean. I haven’t decided what happens to Gary Springfield, Lila, Bear, Marley’s Mom, and Marleys dad.

I greatly appreciate you reading the unfinished and unedited version of the manuscript, out of the many others on the writing sites I sent this on. This currently sits at a whopping 500 views or readers on tumblr, and a little over a thousand on all the other sites combined. Right now I’m looking at different sites to work on the second version of my manuscript that will be finished sometime this December, hopefully.

As there will be no about the author section of this book, my name is Thomas Strong. I am 13 years old currently, and I love writing short stories. I realy appreciate Kim Purcell, another great author for running the outschool class that sparked this idea. Also, to my family. My uncle for always reading the copies of my books, my Mom for pushing me in the right direction to finish this manuscript, and my dad for always being there if I had a question on anything while writing this.

*The owners of Hunters’ Farm are very racist, please do not support them.*

Thank you for reading,

Thomas JG Strong, 8/14/24

#booklr #books #dog #friends #tw death #gory art #in a violent nature #sad ending #sadgirl #manuscript #unfinished #feedback #google docs #writing stuff #creative writing #class project #young author #author

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

Text

Unpersoned

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Unpersoned." It's about the implications of putting critical infrastructure into the private, unaccountable hands of tech giants:

https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/

The column opens with the story of romance writer K Renee, as reported by Madeline Ashby for Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-happens-when-a-romance-author-gets-locked-out-of-google-docs/

Renee is a prolific writer who used Google Docs to compose her books, and share them among early readers for feedback and revisions. Last March, Renee's Google account was locked, and she was no longer able to access ten manuscripts for her unfinished books, totaling over 220,000 words. Google's famously opaque customer service – a mix of indifferently monitored forums, AI chatbots, and buck-passing subcontractors – would not explain to her what rule she had violated, merely that her work had been deemed "inappropriate."

Renee discovered that she wasn't being singled out. Many of her peers had also seen their accounts frozen and their documents locked, and none of them were able to get an explanation out of Google. Renee and her similarly situated victims of Google lockouts were reduced to developing folk-theories of what they had done to be expelled from Google's walled garden; Renee came to believe that she had tripped an anti-spam system by inviting her community of early readers to access the books she was working on.

There's a normal way that these stories resolve themselves: a reporter like Ashby, writing for a widely read publication like Wired, contacts the company and triggers a review by one of the vanishingly small number of people with the authority to undo the determinations of the Kafka-as-a-service systems that underpin the big platforms. The system's victim gets their data back and the company mouths a few empty phrases about how they take something-or-other "very seriously" and so forth.

But in this case, Google broke the script. When Ashby contacted Google about Renee's situation, Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson insisted that the policies for Google accounts were "clear": "we may review and take action on any content that violates our policies." If Renee believed that she'd been wrongly flagged, she could "request an appeal."

But Renee didn't even know what policy she was meant to have broken, and the "appeals" went nowhere.

This is an underappreciated aspect of "software as a service" and "the cloud." As companies from Microsoft to Adobe to Google withdraw the option to use software that runs on your own computer to create files that live on that computer, control over our own lives is quietly slipping away. Sure, it's great to have all your legal documents scanned, encrypted and hosted on GDrive, where they can't be burned up in a house-fire. But if a Google subcontractor decides you've broken some unwritten rule, you can lose access to those docs forever, without appeal or recourse.

That's what happened to "Mark," a San Francisco tech workers whose toddler developed a UTI during the early covid lockdowns. The pediatrician's office told Mark to take a picture of his son's infected penis and transmit it to the practice using a secure medical app. However, Mark's phone was also set up to synch all his pictures to Google Photos (this is a default setting), and when the picture of Mark's son's penis hit Google's cloud, it was automatically scanned and flagged as Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM, better known as "child porn"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

Without contacting Mark, Google sent a copy of all of his data – searches, emails, photos, cloud files, location history and more – to the SFPD, and then terminated his account. Mark lost his phone number (he was a Google Fi customer), his email archives, all the household and professional files he kept on GDrive, his stored passwords, his two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator, and every photo he'd ever taken of his young son.

The SFPD concluded that Mark hadn't done anything wrong, but it was too late. Google had permanently deleted all of Mark's data. The SFPD had to mail a physical letter to Mark telling him he wasn't in trouble, because he had no email and no phone.

Mark's not the only person this happened to. Writing about Mark for the New York Times, Kashmir Hill described other parents, like a Houston father identified as "Cassio," who also lost their accounts and found themselves blocked from fundamental participation in modern life:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

Note that in none of these cases did the problem arise from the fact that Google services are advertising-supported, and because these people weren't paying for the product, they were the product. Buying a $800 Pixel phone or paying more than $100/year for a Google Drive account means that you're definitely paying for the product, and you're still the product.

What do we do about this? One answer would be to force the platforms to provide service to users who, in their judgment, might be engaged in fraud, or trafficking in CSAM, or arranging terrorist attacks. This is not my preferred solution, for reasons that I hope are obvious!

We can try to improve the decision-making processes at these giant platforms so that they catch fewer dolphins in their tuna-nets. The "first wave" of content moderation appeals focused on the establishment of oversight and review boards that wronged users could appeal their cases to. The idea was to establish these "paradigm cases" that would clarify the tricky aspects of content moderation decisions, like whether uploading a Nazi atrocity video in order to criticize it violated a rule against showing gore, Nazi paraphernalia, etc.

This hasn't worked very well. A proposal for "second wave" moderation oversight based on arms-length semi-employees at the platforms who gather and report statistics on moderation calls and complaints hasn't gelled either:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/12/move-slow-and-fix-things/#second-wave

Both the EU and California have privacy rules that allow users to demand their data back from platforms, but neither has proven very useful (yet) in situations where users have their accounts terminated because they are accused of committing gross violations of platform policy. You can see why this would be: if someone is accused of trafficking in child porn or running a pig-butchering scam, it would be perverse to shut down their account but give them all the data they need to go one committing these crimes elsewhere.

But even where you can invoke the EU's GDPR or California's CCPA to get your data, the platforms deliver that data in the most useless, complex blobs imaginable. For example, I recently used the CCPA to force Mailchimp to give me all the data they held on me. Mailchimp – a division of the monopolist and serial fraudster Intuit – is a favored platform for spammers, and I have been added to thousands of Mailchimp lists that bombard me with unsolicited press pitches and come-ons for scam products.

Mailchimp has spent a decade ignoring calls to allow users to see what mailing lists they've been added to, as a prelude to mass unsubscribing from those lists (for Mailchimp, the fact that spammers can pay it to send spam that users can't easily opt out of is a feature, not a bug). I thought that the CCPA might finally let me see the lists I'm on, but instead, Mailchimp sent me more than 5900 files, scattered through which were the internal serial numbers of the lists my name had been added to – but without the names of those lists any contact information for their owners. I can see that I'm on more than 1,000 mailing lists, but I can't do anything about it.

Mailchimp shows how a rule requiring platforms to furnish data-dumps can be easily subverted, and its conduct goes a long way to explaining why a decade of EU policy requiring these dumps has failed to make a dent in the market power of the Big Tech platforms.

The EU has a new solution to this problem. With its 2024 Digital Markets Act, the EU is requiring platforms to furnish APIs – programmatic ways for rivals to connect to their services. With the DMA, we might finally get something parallel to the cellular industry's "number portability" for other kinds of platforms.

If you've ever changed cellular platforms, you know how smooth this can be. When you get sick of your carrier, you set up an account with a new one and get a one-time code. Then you call your old carrier, endure their pathetic begging not to switch, give them that number and within a short time (sometimes only minutes), your phone is now on the new carrier's network, with your old phone-number intact.

This is a much better answer than forcing platforms to provide service to users whom they judge to be criminals or otherwise undesirable, but the platforms hate it. They say they hate it because it makes them complicit in crimes ("if we have to let an accused fraudster transfer their address book to a rival service, we abet the fraud"), but it's obvious that their objection is really about being forced to reduce the pain of switching to a rival.

There's a superficial reasonableness to the platforms' position, but only until you think about Mark, or K Renee, or the other people who've been "unpersonned" by the platforms with no explanation or appeal.

The platforms have rigged things so that you must have an account with them in order to function, but they also want to have the unilateral right to kick people off their systems. The combination of these demands represents more power than any company should have, and Big Tech has repeatedly demonstrated its unfitness to wield this kind of power.

This week, I lost an argument with my accountants about this. They provide me with my tax forms as links to a Microsoft Cloud file, and I need to have a Microsoft login in order to retrieve these files. This policy – and a prohibition on sending customer files as email attachments – came from their IT team, and it was in response to a requirement imposed by their insurer.

The problem here isn't merely that I must now enter into a contractual arrangement with Microsoft in order to do my taxes. It isn't just that Microsoft's terms of service are ghastly. It's not even that they could change those terms at any time, for example, to ingest my sensitive tax documents in order to train a large language model.

It's that Microsoft – like Google, Apple, Facebook and the other giants – routinely disconnects users for reasons it refuses to explain, and offers no meaningful appeal. Microsoft tells its business customers, "force your clients to get a Microsoft account in order to maintain communications security" but also reserves the right to unilaterally ban those clients from having a Microsoft account.

There are examples of this all over. Google recently flipped a switch so that you can't complete a Google Form without being logged into a Google account. Now, my ability to purse all kinds of matters both consequential and trivial turn on Google's good graces, which can change suddenly and arbitrarily. If I was like Mark, permanently banned from Google, I wouldn't have been able to complete Google Forms this week telling a conference organizer what sized t-shirt I wear, but also telling a friend that I could attend their wedding.

Now, perhaps some people really should be locked out of digital life. Maybe people who traffick in CSAM should be locked out of the cloud. But the entity that should make that determination is a court, not a Big Tech content moderator. It's fine for a platform to decide it doesn't want your business – but it shouldn't be up to the platform to decide that no one should be able to provide you with service.

This is especially salient in light of the chaos caused by Crowdstrike's catastrophic software update last week. Crowdstrike demonstrated what happens to users when a cloud provider accidentally terminates their account, but while we're thinking about reducing the likelihood of such accidents, we should really be thinking about what happens when you get Crowdstruck on purpose.

The wholesale chaos that Windows users and their clients, employees, users and stakeholders underwent last week could have been pieced out retail. It could have come as a court order (either by a US court or a foreign court) to disconnect a user and/or brick their computer. It could have come as an insider attack, undertaken by a vengeful employee, or one who was on the take from criminals or a foreign government. The ability to give anyone in the world a Blue Screen of Death could be a feature and not a bug.

It's not that companies are sadistic. When they mistreat us, it's nothing personal. They've just calculated that it would cost them more to run a good process than our business is worth to them. If they know we can't leave for a competitor, if they know we can't sue them, if they know that a tech rival can't give us a tool to get our data out of their silos, then the expected cost of mistreating us goes down. That makes it economically rational to seek out ever-more trivial sources of income that impose ever-more miserable conditions on us. When we can't leave without paying a very steep price, there's practically a fiduciary duty to find ways to upcharge, downgrade, scam, screw and enshittify us, right up to the point where we're so pissed that we quit.

Google could pay competent decision-makers to review every complaint about an account disconnection, but the cost of employing that large, skilled workforce vastly exceeds their expected lifetime revenue from a user like Mark. The fact that this results in the ruination of Mark's life isn't Google's problem – it's Mark's problem.

The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.

Google's defenstration of K Renee, Mark and Cassio may have been accidental, but Google's capacity to defenstrate all of us, and the enormous cost we all bear if Google does so, has been carefully engineered into the system. Same goes for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and anyone else who traps us in their silos. The lesson of the Crowdstrike catastrophe isn't merely that our IT systems are brittle and riddled with single points of failure: it's that these failure-points can be tripped deliberately, and that doing so could be in a company's best interests, no matter how devastating it would be to you or me.

If you'd like an e ssay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #google #monopoly #big tech #locus magazine #crowdstrike #single points of failure

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