Present at the Creation

A Thursday Prompt story
© 2020 by Walter Reimer


Prompt: correspondent


It had been a long day, being escorted from place to place by guards and minders, to see well-scrubbed and happy children learning their lessons and singing patriotic songs, and to talk to obviously well-coached “passers-by” who were simply eager to tell the two-person crew from ZYPR-TV how wonderful life in the People’s Republic of New Haven actually was. The attaché from Rain Island’s Embassy had tried, for the most part successfully, to keep from rolling her eyes too much.

The videotaped footage that the pair would be taking back to Seathl would never be seen in New Haven. Even in 1988, twenty-six years after the New Haven Missile Crisis and the Train Station Summit that ended the standoff without incident, the Trotskyite republic had remained a technological backwater, quite intentionally sealing itself away from decadent capitalist influences like television.

After getting back from their trip to Ansonia, the two ate in the Embassy canteen before going upstairs to their shared room to review what they’d seen, compare notes, and relax before bedtime.

“Hey . . . hey, Bobby! Come look.” The pronghorn antelope had eased the curtain aside and was looking out the window at something. His free paw beckoned to the cougar and he said in a louder voice, “You gotta see this.”

Bobby Two Elk took off his earphones and switched off his Walkfur, silencing the latest single from The Jolly Aunties of Mimi. Getting up from his bed he walked over to the antelope. “What’s going on, Chet?” Chet pointed, and the cougar looked, his ears perking upright as his tail went rigid.

The room was on the third floor of the Embassy, two stories below Ambassador Vronsky’s residence and offices. It faced People’s Square in the heart of New Haven City, sharing the space with the buildings housing the governing Committee of Nine and its various ministries, as well as the half-demolished pile of stone that was once All Saint’s Cathedral. People’s Square was ordinarily quiet after dark, although a grand festival was planned to commemorate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Red Fist Revolt that had toppled the old and ineffective Republic.

Ordinarily, it was quiet.

It wasn’t now.

A group of about fifty members of the People’s Militia, armed with batons and shotguns, stood at the base of the steps leading to the Committee of Nine’s headquarters, while a much larger group of furs were filtering out of side streets onto the greenspace of the Square, bearing torches and lit candles. Two were holding up a banner, a broad strip of white cloth bearing the letters SCND.

“Holy shit,” Bobby breathed. He and Chet had heard whispers during their two week stay, rumors that a student uprising at the University had been suppressed a month before they’d arrived. The group that had led the protest for wider latitude in classes and an increase in beer rations had been called the Student Committee for a New Direction.

“Holy shit is right,” and Chet let the curtain fall as he scrambled to get his Portacam ready. Bobby watched for a few more moments before hurrying to put his pants on and grabbing his own video camera. Making sure that they had their identification and their passes from the Information Ministry prominently displayed, they hustled out the door and headed for the stairs.

The two Embassy guards, both from Rain Island’s Army Union, looked startled as the two reporters burst out of the lobby, taking the stairs at a dead run and headed across the Square to take up a vantage point where they could clearly see the protesters and the Militia.

Bobby turned on his recorder and said loudly enough for the camera-mounted microphone, “This is Robert Two Elk, ZYPR-TV Seathl, reporting from New Haven City.” He paused to look at his Cimex. “It’s October eighth, nineteen eighty-eight, about eight o’clock at night,” and he summarized what he was seeing and the rumors he’d heard. A short distance away he could hear Chet making his own report.

They had to do this quickly, before their minders could react and herd them back into the Embassy.

He couldn’t see any weapons. No clubs, no farm tools, not even a stone scavenged from the side of the road. The entire group, men, women and children, were holding lit candles, paws cupped around them to shield the flames from the swirling breeze.

Moving the camera to get good establishing shots, his ears perked and he swiveled as a burly mastiff wearing a Militia armband stepped away from his compatriots. As the last of the straggling mob entered the square the canine shouted, “By order of the Committee of Nine, this is an illegal assembly! Cease all counterrevolutionary activities and surrender now!”

Bobby felt himself holding his breath, and held his camera steady.

The crowd paused.

And then sat down on the ground.

Surprised, the assembled Militia cadres looked at each other, and ears perked as a soft voice from the crowd started to sing. It was a simple tune, with simple words, and soon everyone in the square with the exception of the People’s Militia and the foreigners were singing.

“Holy Peter,” Bobby heard Chet say, and from the corner of his eye he saw the antelope crossing himself in the Orthodox manner.

The crowd of students and others were singing We Shall Overcome.

The Militia were obviously caught completely off guard by this. Jaws gaped open in disbelief. All these people, and all they were doing was singing? No speeches or counterrevolutionary statements? Not even a murmur of protest?

Just a song?

The mastiff bellowed, “Stop singing!”

The singing continued, and he looked flabbergasted. The other Militia members looked confused as they gazed down at the crowd. Several lowered their weapons.

Rallying, the mastiff said, “None of that, Comrades! Advance, and disperse that crowd down there!” When the fox to the side of him didn’t move quickly enough, he prodded him in the tail with his baton.

The line of Militia proceeded down the steps toward the SCND group, the way before them lit by the flickering glow of candles.

“Are you getting this, um?” Bobby asked.

“Yep,” Chet replied, squinting through his Portacam’s eyepiece while the armed furs reached the bottom of the steps, a couple pointing shotguns at the crowd.

The crowd kept singing, and the two Rain Islanders couldn’t believe it. Usually a cadre’s presence alone was enough to stop any protest dead in its tracks. One of the Militia reached a fur who was holding up the SCND banner, and the skunk raised his baton over his head.

Without stopping her song, the feline looked up at him, and their eyes met.

The skunk paused, faltered, and started to lower his baton.

“What are you waiting for?” the mastiff shouted. “Hit her!”

“Comrade, all she’s doing – all they’re doing – is sitting here and singing,” he said, a trifle defensively. Bobby prayed that his camera had been sensitive enough to catch the man’s voice. Around the Square the cadres had taken up positions, hemming the crowd in to prevent as many as possible from escaping.

“Don’t give me that. They’re wreckers! Counterrevolutionaries! They’re – hey! What do you think YOU’RE doing?” the mastiff suddenly bawled at a stout beagle as the man slung his shotgun and sat down.

“I ain’t doin’ nothing, Comrade,” he said, “just like they ain’t.” He looked around him, a bit embarrassed.

The cadre leader looked around in steadily mounting fury as others of his force sat down with the protesters. A few even started singing along and the canine looked like he wanted to tear his headfur out.

Gradually the song faded away and a single figure stood up, a young feline with gray tabby markings and short headfur. He turned to face the crowd, the Committee chamber and the Militia at his back. “My friends, Comrades . . . people of New Haven,” he said. “My name’s Dan, and I’m the head of the Student’s Committee for a New Direction.

“Me and others like me have decided to do this, because we feel that the Committee of Nine have lost their way, and no longer represent the People or the True Revolution. We could have taken up guns and fought our way into this building behind me, but we don’t want bloodshed. No violence. None. Shoot us, beat us, drag us off to prison – we will not resist, because we know that a new revolution, a new direction, requires that the beginning be new.

“I’m going in there, now,” and he half-turned to point at the building. “I may not come out. Will you come with me, and see if the Nine will hear the real will of the people?” Without waiting for an answer he turned and started walking to the steps.

The cougar heard the pronghorn’s breath catch.

The mastiff moved to bar his path, his baton raised over his head. “Come one step closer, traitor, and I’ll break your head!” he snarled.

Dan appeared unmoved. He put his paws in his pockets and said quietly, “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Go ahead.’” Behind him, the crowd started to stand up and move toward him. A few started to sing again, and soon they were all singing.

“I . . . er, that is, Comrades,” the mastiff faltered, and started to visibly wilt at the odds stacked against him. The upraised length of stout oak lowered and the feline moved slightly to one side and up the stairs, leaving the mastiff looking defeated as the crowd surged past him.

The doors resisted briefly, but gave way, and the crowd swept in.

Chet called out, “Want to follow them, um?”

“I think we’re pushing our luck,” Bobby replied. “Let’s get back inside and let Seathl know.” The two started loping toward the safety of the Embassy, and Bobby said, “We’ll win the Purrlitzer for sure.”


***


Compared to New Haven’s Red Fist Revolt of 1931, the Candlelight Revolution of 1988 that toppled the Committee of Nine was relatively bloodless. Through the good offices of Rain Island’s Foreign Affairs Syndicate, the infant provisional government of the small country reached out to the United Nations for help in alleviating the food shortages that had spurred the revolution.

New Haven was admitted as a member of the United Nations in 2000.