Fast Forward

Chapter 8

“Nathan, would you be able to get me in touch with Jesse?”, I asked.

“It’s not easy, but I think so”, Nathan said, “I’m guessing he may have a passing interest in one of his ancestors”.

“I’m kinda interested in him myself. I’m just shocked at what happened to the government. What happened to all the Conservatives? I was no fan of them but they did help balance the government”.

“They were framed”, Gregory said, “at least that’s something you’ll hear from everyone except the government. It all started with the assassination of Malia Obama in 2040 after she won the presidential election in November.”

“Malia Obama?”, Calvin asked, “Wasn’t that President Obama’s oldest child?”.

“Yeah”, Gregory said, “It was done with an armed stealth drone that flew and killed her, her husband and their two children, her sister and her parents as well as a couple hundred people that were in that room.”

Calvin was shocked. Nathan brought up video of the event and Calvin could see Malia Obama, still pretty as ever, coming out on stage to report that she had received a call from her opponent stating that he accepted that she had more votes than he did. Her parents, the former President and his wife were on her left side and her husband and their children were on her right side. Suddenly all of them started to fall as their bodies exploded from massive hits from high caliber rounds from above. The camera shifted to show a drone killing everyone on stage. People in the audience were already running as the drone turned on them and dropped explosives into the crowd as it continued firing rounds into them. The explosions destroyed the camera ending the video.

Calvin didn’t know what to say. Gregory continued, “No one really knows who sent the drone in there. The federal investigation came to a dead end with zero leads. But it lead to a liberal rebirth as conservatives were labeled as killers in every election and very news channel, every news web site made it clear that conservatives had something to do with the Obama killings. The Republican party just merged with the Democrat party and liberalism had it’s way with everything. Christians and the Bible were seen as threats to liberalism and while Christianity was not made illegal, Christians found they had very little rights in anything. The Bible was changed to satisfy the liberals of the day. Conservatives never recovered”.

“How do you guys feel about the government now?”, Calvin asked.

They looked at each other and laughed. “It’s something we don’t talk about”, Nathan said. “Once conservatism died, laws were passed taking away freedom of speech in regards to speaking out against the government”.

“But…is everyone happy with how things are?”, Calvin asked.

“It is what it is”, Ansel said as the other shook their heads in agreement.

“I’ll start working on finding Jesse”, Nathan said. “I’ll let you know if I find something”.

Calvin went back to my room and sat on his bed. Calvin had been a liberal because he wanted equal treatment for everyone. Everyone should have a fair chance in life. Conservatives only seemed to be against everything, but with them gone he wasn’t so sure that liberalism was everything that he thought it would be. Sure, most things were free for everyone, but…it just seemed as if there was less freedom for everyone.

I mean, thought Calvin, I liked freedom of speech, but I always thought that stupid comments made without any proof should be banned. Calvin just didn’t think the US would go so far as to ban speech made against the government itself. This is the US…not some third world kingdom run by a family dynasty. Or was it? Calvin hadn’t had a chance to learn if the US still had a president or was it run by a king. Calvin was so far behind that he felt it would take months to catch up on what he missed out on for the last hundred years. He just needed a computer and time to just sit down and go over everything.

But, Aun Swan was going to be here tomorrow to have Calvin’s Equalizer installed. Did he really want that? Calvin was having second thoughts about having the federal government access his mind anytime they wanted to. Would they be able to see what he saw? Could they see what his room mates saw? Was there too much to look at and not enough people working for the government?

That seemed more likely. But wouldn’t they have someone like me program their computers with artificial intelligence to do a lot of the work the government needed, Calvin wondered. Probably unless there was something else going on. A lot could happen in a hundred years. Maybe this government was just filled with ignorant people. If so, that was one thing that hadn’t changed in hundred years.

Calvin pulled up his computer and started working on how to use it. It was a bit simpler than he thought. It was a bit dumbed down but he thought that had something to do with the populace at large. He remember them telling him that there was no competition and so updates were probably years apart or even decades apart. Calvin hated to think it but he was starting to think that conservatism wasn’t so bad for some things. But if conservatism had a hundred years with no liberal opposition…would the US be better off? That was something that Calvin wasn’t so sure about.

Calvin had finally worked out a number of computer commands and was about to start a search when the entire house shook from a massive explosion.