The Whistleblowing Couriers

CHAPTER SEVEN - "THEY CAN'T KILL US ALL"

Noor and Yahola nodded at Mary as they left The People's Communiqués. She stood at attention outside the entrance, her pistol and revolver resting comfortably in her palms. Mary and Lyudmila were the only members of The People's Communiqués to stay overnight in the newspaper's office. Yahola had also learned that, when questioning Noor why Lyudmila had shifted from nearly shooting the quintet to hugging her comrade, both women were trained to shoot any of their colleagues who failed to state the passcode that followed their name. Each person who worked for The People's Communiqués would deliberately not state the code as a signal of being compromised. The paper would therefore be given a brief window to evacuate.

These were the least surprising revelations that Yahola had learned as he waited in line to receive his flip phone from the closed safe. There was the moment he received his first ever paycheck of $19.72, handed out as cash and coins as only registered voters could open and have bank accounts. The pay was astronomically higher than the average daily wage of the 71% of Americans who were employed.

Catherine told Yahola as he received his pay that The People's Communiqués paid each employee the same. The newspaper sought to be what it hoped the United States would eventually be: an equitable, economically socialist, representative democratic society whose bedrock was the Declaration and the Constitution restored with the Bill of Rights and the repealed amendments. As a new member, Yahola could now participate in the weekly, daylong debates between members regarding the paper's direction and proposals for change.

Then, Yahola learned of the life-or-death rules regarding his flip phone. His flip phone could be carried to the only two locations he was allowed to be in as a non-voter: work and home. If he wished to travel to any other location, aside from work trips, his flip phone must be kept in the location that he should be in at that time of day. Finally, when carrying a flip phone, Yahola would have to watch his words and his actions, including even the movement of his eyes and the gait of his walk. Anything minutely suspicious would trigger the flip phone's surveillance system, automatically leading to his detention, interrogation, and probable death.

Finally, Yahola learned that he would be accompanying Noor to Fort Greene Park. That fact puzzled him, for he had assumed that he would be heading to his new home, and not a park. Still, Yahola felt it would be impolite to question Noor on the matter, for there was the remote likelihood that perhaps Noor's home was in the park. Whatever the reason may be for the journey to the park, Yahola was looking forward to having something other than a cement floor to sleep on.

These were the thoughts pounding in his head as he stepped onto Clinton alongside Noor. She made nearly imperceptible motions to indicate any turns or stops. While Yahola kept an eye on such gestures, he also mirrored his comrade's body language, trying his best to similarly give off the impression of a relaxed, calm journalist heading home. But the presence of the metallic device in his pocket discomfited his nerves.

It was a freezing, smoggy evening as the duo headed towards Pierrepont. They joined the crowd of bedraggled, starving, underemployed sea of workers limping either to another job or the piece of public land deemed home. Due to the Depression, the whopping cost of gasoline and electric vehicles, the new law stating only registered voters could own and purchase vehicles, and the national security act that prohibited travel outside of work and home, the majority of Americans no longer owned vehicles. The result was that any rare non-military, non-commercial vehicle on the street most likely belonged to a registered voter or was being borrowed by that person's privileged family and friends. Furthermore, the streets of the United States had largely turned into accidental pedestrianized walkways, as the elimination of funding for public transportation forced past commuters to trek home. All in all, most Americans were now imprisoned by their circumstances within the geographical confines of their home and work, leading to a sense of incomprehensible isolation in the 21st century.