“If that’s not the world you want to live in, then let’s make some noise together! I’ll see you on the National Mall on Monday, November first. But if you’re at the mall, and not on the mall, well, maybe unwinding might be your best option. Signing off with everyone’s favorite tune. And remember—the truth will keep you whole.

“I’ve got you . . . under my skin. . . .”

72 • Strangers

He’s a thirty-five-year-old accountant. Ran track for UCLA, but has since developed the spare tire that comes with a sedentary profession. Now he runs a steady clip on the treadmill at his local gym beside strangers, never getting any closer to the palm trees outside the window.

“Crazy thing, isn’t it?” says the runner on the next treadmill. “That poor kid.”

“I hear ya,” says the accountant, in between breaths, knowing exactly what the guy is referring to. “The way they . . . just shot him . . . down.”

They’re speaking, of course, about that tithe clapper kid, Levi something-or-other, who came out from under a rock just long enough to be blasted by trigger-happy cops. Half the TVs hanging above their heads in the gym are still reporting on it days after the actual event.

“If you ask me,” says the stranger, “the whole Juvenile Authority oughta be investigated. Heads need to roll.”

“I hear ya.”

Even though only one of the three officers that shot him was a Juvey-cop, the Juvies are getting all the heat from it—and rightly so. Up above, the TVs show various protests in the wake of the shooting. Seems like people are protesting everywhere.

The accountant tries to catch his breath so he can ask his co-runner a question. “Did they finally give him those organs?”

“Are you kidding me? The Juvenile Authority is stupid, but not that stupid.”

At first, to calm a furious public, the Juvies promised to give him the organs needed to save him—but, of course, it would be all unwound parts. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. Give a kid who’s protesting unwinding the parts of other kids? What were they thinking?

“Naah,” says a runner on his other side. “They’ll just keep him hooked up to all those machines until people forget, and then quietly unplug him. The bastards.”

“I hear ya.”

Although the accountant doesn’t think people will forget it so quickly.

• • •

A woman sits on a commuter train heading into Chicago for yet another day of pointless meetings with self-important people who think they know all there is to know about real estate.

There’s something odd happening on the train today, however. Something entirely unheard of on public transportation. People are talking. Not people who know one another either, but total strangers. In fact, a stranger sitting across from her looks up from his newspaper and says to anyone who’s listening, “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad for yesterday’s clapper attack downtown.”

“Well, I can’t exactly say I’m glad,” says a woman who rides standing and holding a pole. “But I’m certainly not shedding any tears.”

“And anyone who survived ought to go to prison for life,” adds someone else.

The real estate agent finds, oddly, that she’s compelled to join in. “I don’t even think it was a real clapper attack—it was just made to look like one,” she says. “There are plenty of people angry enough to want to blow Proactive Citizenry sky-high.”

“That’s right,” says someone else. “And if Proactive Citizenry controls the clappers, why would they target their own headquarters? It must have been someone else!”

“Whoever did it oughta be given a medal,” calls someone from the front of the train car.

“Well, violence is never justified,” says the standing woman. “But what goes around comes around, I say.”

The real estate agent has to agree. The way the supposed charity manipulated the Juvenile Authority, bought politicians, and pushed the public to support unwinding . . . Thank God it’s all come to light before this year’s elections! Unable to contain her own righteous rage, she turns to the intimidating man in a hoodie beside her, a person whose existence she would have ignored a few days ago. “Have you seen the images of those poor rewinds they were making in Hawaii?”

The man nods sadly. “Some people say they oughta be euthanized.”

The suggestion makes the woman uncomfortable. “Don’t they have rights? After all, they’re human beings, aren’t they?”

“The law says otherwise. . . .”

The real estate agent finds herself clutching her purse close to her, as if it might be taken away—but she knows it’s not her purse she’s worried about losing.

“Then the law needs to change,” she says.

• • •

The construction worker’s been unemployed for months now. He sits in a coffee shop scouring want ads. His first interview in weeks is that afternoon. It’s with a company contracted to build a harvest camp in rural Alabama. He should be thrilled, but his feelings are mixed. Why do they even need to build another harvest camp? Didn’t some company just announce that there’s a way to grow all sorts of organs? If it’s true, then why cut up kids? Even bad kids?

It’s just a job, he tries to tell himself, and I’ll be gone long before any kid is actually unwound there. And yet, to be a silent partner with the Juvenile Authority . . . A week ago he might have thought nothing of it, but now?