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  “I see you have met our little bundles of joy,” she said.

  “These children need real medical attention,” Manny said groggily.

  “The Leftea party was designated a terrorist organization by the government. We can’t risk it.”

  “Some of them are gonna die.”

  “The government will shut down the entire operation if we are exposed. Follow me. I need to show you something.”

  Francesca led Manny into the house, through a dingy hallway littered with plants and hookahs, and into a small storage room filled with old computers, printers, and cords from a bygone era. The computers and rear projection monitors were likely tan colored when they were new, but the gigantic relics had a dirty, dark brown hue to them.

  Francesca pointed to the machines. “These computers are from the days before GPS was mandated in all computers. Here is where we organize the revolution with the Leftea chapters around the country and with our comrades internationally. It’s also where we organize our annual tai kwan yoga retreat.”

  “My ex loved tai kwan yoga,” Manny said, distracted from his stomach situation and the children’s plight.

  “Stay focused, Manny. I brought you in here because we need your help. I want to reenergize the national Leftea party. Right now there’s a huge feud between the Trotskyites from Santa Cruz and the Zapatistas from Bar Harbor. To be honest, I don’t even remember what the fight is about, but the Zaps want us to organize a rally with them down here and the Trots somehow found out about this. Now they’re mad at us and have been really obnoxious, even mocking the brand of militant Buddhism that we adhere to. Anyway, some of the Trots’ xml data proxies have been compromised by tracking bots and their air gaps have been breached. I maybe sort of told them yesterday that you could possibly help them out. I thought that would get them off our backs. But it gets worse. Those Trots, they’re real morons. Not good with computers. It’s why their proxies got compromised in the first place. Yesterday evening they sent their code over here on an unsecured network connection. Now we think our proxies have been compromised. But the problem is no one here knows how to disable these types of tracking bots. Except you. Long story short, can you reconfigure this computer and disable the tracking bots?”

  Manny was hesitant. “I don’t know.”

  Francesca pleaded, “The revolution’s depending on it. We all trust you now, Manny. We want you on our team. Join us and disable the bots. Disable the bots for the people.”

  “I swore off computers years ago.” Manny looked at the computer with a fearful sense of desire. He could hear it calling him. It didn’t help that it was the computer he grew up with – the INStyLix 3000.

  Francesca stepped back. She saw the silent dialogue occurring between Manny and the machine, and let it play out. Years of computerless activity for Manny had resulted in enormous pent-up desire, and almost against his will, his eyes locked on the computer and he started to perspire. His complexion, which was pale and lifeless a few minutes earlier, was now flushed. He licked his bottom lip. He cracked his knuckles. He pulled out the chair and sat down.

  Ten minutes of furious typing later, Manny managed to reconfigure the xjml data proxies. He got up from the computer and looked at Francesca, who silently watched from the other side of the room.

  “Restart the computer,” Manny said as he walked out of the room. He stood in the hallway and stared at his hands, certain that it wasn’t the campylobacter that was making them tremble.

  4.9

  Manny was running late to his first Leftea planning meeting, but so was everybody else. He had been at the compound for a week and hadn’t seen all that much planning of anything at all, and so he was eager to see just what it was this group had in mind when it came to their revolutionary agenda.

  Around ten people made it to the meeting. They sprawled out on bean bag chairs and yoga mats scattered throughout the living room. Manny accidentally knocked over a hookah when he sat down, drawing the ire of Muffin Top, who shot him a disapproving look from the hammock that monopolized much of the back section of the room and was tenuously held up with some recycled rope and duct tape.

  Francesca called the meeting to order from the front of the room. She was the most organized and focused of the group, which was to say that she was not napping, knitting, or tripping on acid. She outlined the group’s objectives for the coming weeks, which she said fell into two categories: fundraising and outreach.

  When she finished, she placed her head down and touched her palms together. “Sri Chin Vanderweiss would be proud of these goals.”

  Manny leaned toward Chadwick, who seemed the second most attentive of the meeting participants. “Sri Chin Vanderweiss?” Manny whispered.

  “Yes,” Chadwick said. “He is our spiritual leader.”

  “Do you have a question for the group?” Francesca interjected.

  “Oh, sorry,” Manny replied. “I just wasn’t sure who Sri Chin Vanderweiss is.”

  “You aren’t familiar with his work?” Francesca asked.

  “Sorry, no.”

  “So then you are unfamiliar with his groundbreaking texts on militant Buddhism.”

  “I’m not familiar.”

  “Well, that is certainly unacceptable. The Virginia chapter of the Leftea party looks to Sri Chin Vanderweiss for spiritual guidance on all of our activities.”

  Muffin Top looked up from his knitting, a half-finished scarf, and gave Manny one of his now familiar patronizing looks. “We are all students of Sri Chin Vandy.”

  Chadwick said, “My favorite work of his is definitely ‘Kill them with Kindness: Cuddling up to Your Violent Spirit Animal, Volume 12.’”

  “Seminal text,” Francesca said, taking a long, thoughtful sip of her tea. “Violence is the only true route to Nirvana in the asymmetric battlefield of modern times. In the last two years, we have set the standard for attacks of the Chin-Vanderweiss kind. We have hit six churches, ten anti-abortion groups, and two Milton Friedman appreciation clubs.”

  “You bomb anti-abortion groups?”

  “Yes, we target groups that target abortion clinics,” Francesca said.

  “They bomb abortion clinics; we bomb them first,” Chadwick said.

  “And this has been successful in getting your message out? Kindness bombs?” Manny asked.

  “Over time, our peaceful spirit will conquer the haters; that’s pure Chin Vanderweiss right there,” Muffin Top said, squinting, grimacing, and nodding with a pensive glare to the rest of the group.

  “Even with the administration’s campaign of disenfranchisement, control and manipulation, we remind the world that there is an alternative out there,” Chadwick said in a youthful and earnest tone.

  Francesca took time out of the meeting to give Manny a brief history of Militant Buddhism. Sri Chin Vanderweiss, whose original name was Claypool Vanderweiss of the Vanderweiss family, Manny was told, took a summer sojourn to India in 2015. He was on leave from the well-known interpretive dance troupe he founded, the Vanderweiss Exspectacle. He never returned from India, and the Vanderweiss family, wealthy from lucrative copper mining contracts signed centuries prior but no longer a powerful American dynasty, organized an exhaustive search throughout India. To no avail. At a cost of nearly $50 million, search and rescue teams set out across the vast Indian landscape to track down Claypool, a fair-skinned and freckled 6’8 beanpole with red dreadlocks that reached the small of his back. His family believed that he would be easy to spot if he was still alive, and so, after two years of searching, he was presumed dead. The Vanderweiss family held a lavish funeral for him in absentia. The remaining 12 dancers of the Vanderweiss Exspectacle staged a 48-hour performance of his most enduring and well-known work at Lincoln Center: “Inversion oF dEsIre, a deaTH story UNTold.” A scholarship at the New School in New York was set up in his name, and the interpretive dance world tried to move forward without direction from one of its brightest stars.

  Four years later, grainy video of the
now Sri Chin Vanderweiss began circulating on the Internet. His head was shaved, and he was dressed in nothing but a pair of snug, skimpy, frayed jorts and a weapons belt adorned with knives and hand grenades. He had packed on at least 30 pounds of muscle and was flanked by a number of young Indian women and children.

  As Francesca told this story, she stared off into space for a moment as if seeing the picture in her mind. “The story he told in these videos,” she said, “many of them uploaded to furtl’s video streaming site by his ‘urban concubines’ in Chennai, was followed up by numerous books and scrolls. He was a man transformed. On a hike in northeastern India, close to the border with Tibet, he came upon a group of Buddhist exiles — most of them women — that had been cast out of their village for violating restrictions on dancing, an issue close to Claypool’s heart…”

  Chadwick leaned over and whispered in Manny’s ear: “Footloose – the one with Kevin Bacon – was his second favorite movie of all time, right behind Sex and the City 2.”

  Francesca continued with her story. “Over the course of the next six months, Claypool and his ‘dance army’ took back the village from whence these outcasts came via clandestine attacks/dance parties. Villagers were abducted, sometimes one at a time and sometimes in a group, and subjected to days-long orgies of dance and sexual revelry. Over time, the majority of the village came around to Chin Vanderweiss’s philosophy of pleasure at all costs and he rose to great power within the community. For two years after he decided to share his story and his militant Buddhist philosophy with the rest of the world he was ignored. By the time his identity was confirmed and members of the Vanderweiss Exspectacle traveled to visit him in India, he had fathered 12 children and was living in a heavily fortified palace with his harem of close advisors and ‘spiritual inspirations.’ The Vanderweiss family, initially ecstatic to discover he was alive, soon realized that the Claypool Vanderweiss they knew was no longer.”

  Francesca also told Manny that Sri Chin was rejected by Buddhist scholars, mainstream society, the interpretive dance community, and the majority of his family, but that Sri Chin Vanderweiss soldiered on, publishing manifesto after manifesto of his militant Buddhist philosophy, eventually gaining a small but loyal following in pockets of Western Europe and the United States. Twice a year, week-long dance and battle-training raves would be held in his palace for the price of $50,000 per person. All proceeds went to weapons procurement and militant Buddhism marketing materials.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Sri Chin, Manny, seeing as you’re such a man of the world,” Francesca said. “Anyway, the Leftea party has adapted his work for our movement. We are now in phase one: armed insurrection. When we vanquish our foes, we will implement phase two: heartbeat governance set to the pulsating rhythm of the human soul. In other words, Sri Chin’s way will foster a government that provides its people with everything they need, whenever they need it, no matter what they need.” Francesca surveyed the room and realized nobody was paying attention. “We haven’t talked about the bake sale yet. We should keep this meeting moving.”

  Muffin Top was excited at the turn of topic. “Okay, I think most of the baked goods are ready. And I just finished up the LSDollipops, so those should help us hit our revenue targets this month.”

  “I’ll circulate the message through the school system later today. There will be lots of kids excited for those lollipops.”

  LSDollipops?” Manny asked.

  Francesca set her sights right at Manny. “We sell them at the schools outside the gates. It’s a very reliable source of revenue for our operation. Of course, if we had alternative revenue streams – hint, hint – we could start to transition out of this business. Like say if someone sympathetic to our cause with lots of cash on hand from a previous windfall sale of a company — hint, hint — was able to bankroll some of our more expensive activities.”

  “I don’t get it,” Muffin Top said.

  4.10

  Manny withheld judgment on the group. He also withheld financial support until he could assess the group’s potential. The day after the meeting he was asked to join the gang on a trip to the local middle school for some “fundraising.” Chadwick told Manny that, on his signal — both arms raised over his head in an X formation — Manny was to throw him one of the Frisbees from the back of the group’s rundown GPS-free van.

  Manny waited in the van in the parking lot while Chadwick and a large middle-aged woman who went by the one word name of Commandante spoke to some overweight, shifty-looking students behind the bleachers next to the football field.

  After a few minutes, Chadwick gave Manny the signal. Manny retrieved the Frisbee and climbed out of the van, cocked his arm and let the disc fly. His throw came up about 20 yards short and 10 yards wide, requiring Commandante to trundle after it. Dante and Chad, as Chadwick and Commandante were known on the streets, forgot to ask Manny if he knew how to throw a Frisbee weighed down with lollipops.

  Later that day, the trio picked up Muffin Top and Paul and made their way to a local health clinic, one of the few remaining that still performed abortions and had not been shut down by the DCS. The Supreme Court had not made abortion illegal at the federal level, but very few clinics were able to perform abortions without getting buried in CRADs.

  The Supreme Court, in fact, refused to hear cases on all social/cultural/reproductive issues for at least a decade, likely so as to keep from stepping on the toes of the DCS. Rumor had it, however, that the DCS didn’t shut this clinic down because the children of a few high-ranking DCS employees sometimes needed to clandestinely utilize its services.

  The Lefteas sat in the van, perched at the passenger side windows, watching a group of protesters harass those who entered and exited the premises. The protesters shouted things like, “DEAD BABY WALKING” and “WHAT IF JESUS WAS ABORTED?” and “HELL NO, YOUR BABY MUST NOT GO” to a timid young woman making her way into the building.

  A DCS van circled the parking lot while this happened, and the DCS driver was observing the protest as he drove by, his head all but hanging out the window. Some of the protesters waved to the driver, and he waved back.

  Paul took out a blowdart, dipped it in a vial, and gave it to Muffin Top. He then did the same thing four more times for the rest of the group.

  “Shame to waste such good acid,” Muffin Top said.

  “Well, perhaps these lunatics will develop a more enlightened perspective and stop this nonsense,” Paul said.

  “Wait, what?” Manny asked.

  “Objective two. Outreach,” Muffin Top said. “This morning was fundraising. This afternoon is outreach.”

  “How is this outreach?”

  “How is it not outreach, Manny? When we get back to HQ, I will direct you to Sri Chin’s treatise on forced enlightenment, and it’ll all be very clear.”

  Manny looked at his dart dipped in LSD.

  “You’re one of us now, Manny. Accept it. Sri Chin Vanderweiss, Volume 5: Cuddlebears of Destruction. The future will be peace, when violence is the path,” Muffin Top said, as he raised the dart gun to his mouth. “Is everybody ready?”

  Manny and the rest of the Lefteas in the van stuck their heads out of the windows and readied their LSDarts. As the DCS van turned and moved away from the Leftea van, Muffin Top said, “On my count. One, two, shoot!”

  Manny and the group shot the blowdarts. The sour taste made Manny recoil. He watched as a protester grabbed his leg and started hopping around. The rest of the protesters ran over to tend to the injured protestor. No other darts hit their targets.

  In the van, Muffin Top was holding his throat and flailing about. Manny surmised that he mistakenly sucked the dart backwards into his throat. As Muffin Top’s eyes bulged and he choked and squirmed, Paul jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled out as the protesters looked around in a confused manner.

  Later that day, after an underwhelming bombing attempt on the National American Anti-Abortion Crusade Partnership (NAAACP) – the
ir improvised explosive device failed to detonate – the gang called it a day.

  Back at the Leftea compound, the group regaled the rest of the Lefteas with stories of their successful activities. Manny went back to his tent. Right in front of it a game of hacky sack was gaining momentum.

  Osgood yelled at Manny as he approached his tent, “C’mon Manny, we are so on a roll right now. Join our hack!”

  The rest of the circle yelled, “Join our hack!”

  The circle made room for him, and as the rest of the Lefteas were kicking and kneeing the sack, Manny watched with a lifeless stare. Eventually the sack made its way right to Manny’s zone. Manny, looking as if his shoe was stuck on a piece of gum, let out a limp effort to connect with it. The sack hit the ground.

  The group let out a big groan of disappointment.

  “What’s wrong, Manny?” Osgood inquired.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry I let the circle down,” Manny said as he departed.

  Early the next morning before anybody was awake, Manny left the compound.

  chapter 5

  Realizing he could not harness the Leftea party’s resistance infrastructure to help repair the damage that furtl had done to America’s founding principles, Manny set off once again in search of inspiration.

  When he was growing furtl, Manny believed in the benefits and efficiency of allowing one company to integrate and aggregate your finances, communications, commerce, entertainment, and news. But he now realized there was a downside. For instance, his use of anything other than furtl Electronic Payments (fEPs) in convenience stores often resulted in looks of suspicion from cashiers. When Manny tried to explain why he preferred cash, he was frequently met with warnings that he would soon be relieved of that cash by the many thieves that operated in the shadows.

  And one day, a cashier at the FASTMART was nice enough to explain to him how the “ficktum” worked. Manny learned that large cash transactions were registered by monitoring chips installed in all cash registers and safe deposit boxes in commercial enterprises. Information from these machines was communicated to the DCS via the furtl Cash Transaction Monitor (fCTM), or “ficktum.” The fCTM was originally put in place to monitor the activities of Islamic terrorists, as many of them were operating in a primarily cash environment. Soon after its initiation, however, the fCTM began picking up any cash payment over $200 and flagging it for review by the DCS, regardless of its perceived intent.