TANSY SHRUGGED
This began as a blog post Claire Wolfe tossed out in March 2013. She had the opening of a story but didn't know where to go with it. Members of the Living Freedom blog Commentariat took it from there. (Took it in several not always compatible but always creative directions, actually.)
MamaLiberty offered to move the story to the TMM Writers Block so that more people could go on reading and continuing it if they like.
TANSY SHRUGGED
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Claire wrote:
Tansy yawned and dropped the big book to the floor beside her chair. It landed with a window-rattling thump.
Finally, she thought. I made it. She imagined this is what Medieval penitents had felt like after the last stop on a “go ’round the countryside whipping themselves from village to village” tour. Not pleasant, but done.
She had finally managed to fulfill Aunt Cheetah’s dying request: that she read Atlas Shrugged from cover-to-cover, not even skipping a word of The Speech. When Cheetah (whose real name was Charlene, but who was a capital-C Character) had gasped out those words — The Speech — from her cancer-ridden lungs and desert-dry throat, Tansy had had no idea what The Speech was or just how hard it would be to get through not only its 70 pages of opaque philosophizing, but the other 1000+ pages around it. It had taken months — years! But she had kept her promise to her favorite aunt at last.
Tansy flung herself back in the recliner and mildly wondered if The Tome would get all moldy if it spent the rest of its days as a doorstop.
Still, she had to admit that, awful though it was (as somebody said, Ayn Rand should have gotten a writer to write it for her), it had some wonderfulness, too. What girl wouldn’t want to be Dagny Taggart, all good-looking and buff and smart and running around in capes off-the-shoulder gowns all the time? And having the world’s hottest and richest guys after her (though, she reflected, early-reject Francisco was the only real keeper of the lot).
And the strike … now that was An Idea. Yes, it was. A brilliant idea. If plumbers and teachers and electricians and airline pilots could go on strike when they didn’t think they were being treated fairly, why not geniuses? (Genii?)
And if geniuses could go on strike …
Wait a minute …
Tansy, who had closed her eyes while fantasizing standing atop a railroad car in a floor-length velvet cape, opened them and peered at the ceiling as if the secrets of the universe might be hidden amid its bland orange-peel texture.
If geniuses can go on strike, why not ordinary, everyday people? Why not me and my friends?
Yeah. Why not?
Of course, there were problems. Like exactly who would they strike against? And — to be blunt — who would notice? I mean, Tansy mused as she gazed ceilingward, it’s one thing when big executives walk off the job. And you sure as heck notice that plumbers are gone when your toilet starts spewing murky water onto your ceiling and nobody shows up to fix it. But who — really now, who? — would notice if a bunch of nobody-in-particulars declared a strike?
She tried to picture her friends and wondered a) if they’d think the idea was crazy and b) who’d care if they suddenly … well, did whatever it was they’d do if they went on strike (a thing she was not yet clear on but would probably have to figure out eventually).
Yeah. It was a crazy idea. But still … An Idea. Here they were, the hapless Millennials, loaded with debt and grasping for opportunity that always stayed out of reach. Expected to pay for wars and welfare states and bankers’ bonuses when they couldn’t even keep up with their own student loans.
Something was wrong in the world. Something the Occupy people didn’t really get and the Anonymous people maybe got but didn’t know what to do with. But maybe that old butch Russian had some idea how to fix.
A strike.
Foolish as it seemed, Tansy just couldn’t get the idea out of her head. She had to talk to somebody about this. Somebody who might get it.
Who would she ask? There was Bernadine, an arty type who probably really did think the would couldn’t live without her multi-media conceptual performances set to the music of John Cage. Hm. Probably not Bernadine. But what about Reynard? He was just strange enough to go for the idea yet sensible enough to know how to get things done. He had already hinted darkly about “making plans” against “them.” He might be worth plying with a few beers and running the idea by.
It wasn’t yet clear to Tansy what she and her friends should strike against, let alone what they should strike for. But in her mind, she keep hearing an insistent rhythm, a chant, a drumbeat: Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!
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Sam wrote:
A thump at the door brought her out of her dreamy haze. Chants of “Strike, strike, strike” fading from her mind as she moved to the door.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The knocking was growing louder.
“Tansy! Tansy! Open the DOOR!
Tansy knew the voice to be that of her neighbor Leon Detrich-something or other. Leon lived two doors down and was handsome enough. In his late 20′s with an athletes body and a large patch of unkept hair. He always reminded Tansy of a typical surfer dude type. If he didn’t always keep such odd hours she would have loved to get to know him better. As it was, other then waving hello and goodbye, Tansy wasn’t even sure they had ever spoken for longer then 30 seconds. What could be so urgent?
Tansy open the door. Leon flew past her closing the door, locking it. He turned grabbing Tansy around the shoulders. His fingers holding on much to tightly.
“They are coming!” He said his eyes wild, panic etched his face.
“Who is coming Leon? What is going on?”
“They are coming. They heard your thoughts. I heard them too. Your in danger! THEY ARE COMING!”
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IndividualAudienceMember wrote:
Tansy looked over Leon’s shoulder and saw the trucks coming down the road, one by one they stopped at each house and painted a marker on the ground. They didn’t look to be in a hurry, “what was the rush?” she said out loud.
She suddenly felt like she was in a game or in a movie.
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/who-will-be-the-first-killer-wearing-google-glass/ Leon’s wild eyes were causing her to feel more alarmed, but she didn’t know why. Was this a game of some kind? A new kind of sport of some sort?
http://billmoyers.com/segment/nick-turse-describes-the-real-vietnam-war/ Then she heard it…
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IndividualAudienceMember wrote:
Tansy’s other neighbor, Jan Gary, was working in the garden when all the commotion started. Jan Gary made no attempt to understand what was going on or interfere, just kept focusing on hoeing while hoping it would all make sense the next time the neighbors met at the end of a days work.
[Just messing with ya:)]
A Monarch butterfly caught Jan Gary’s attention while it made it’s way from one lot to the next. It was a particularly beautiful butterfly, more-so than others so commonly found this time of year.
Then he heard it…
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Claire wrote:
Jan heard one of the trucks stop behind him. Its door opened with a screech as a worker with a can of spray paint emerged. Jan was going to continue to ignore the whole situation, until the worker did a polite little throat-clearing to get attention.
Jan turned, hoe still in hand. The worker proffered a pamphlet, which Jan wordlessly took in his gnarled, dirt-ground hand. The pamphlet said that the neighborhood was scheduled for a utility upgrade and the various markings were to indicate which homes were to receive new digital meters and which — the homes of heavy users — were to have their power throttled for part of the day under Regional Power Directive 9-278D.
Jan nodded in his complacent, cow-like way and seemed not to notice when the crews moved down the street.
Jan Gary was such a nondescript person that it often took new acquaintances some time to figure out whether he was a he-Jan or a she-Jan. And after figuring it out, they often discovered they didn’t really care. Dullness pervaded him.
But he was not as stupid or as unobservant as most assumed. On the contrary, Jan Gary was a savant. He had a hard time relating to humans. But numbers, signs, and symbols he understood with uncanny precision. Once the trucks had turned the corner, he raised his eyes from his hoe and a single glance at the figures painted along the street screamed TROUBLE.
One trouble spot stood out from all the rest. Jan had just seen that Leon person go rushing into the ground-floor apartment in the old Victorian where that nice Tansy Danner lived. It was there that the danger was focused.
Every encounter with the mysterious species of People was fraught with stress for Jan. But Tansy had always smiled and waved when she saw him and even tried to make conversation. So even though it was going to be terribly, terribly difficult to make the long trek up the walk to her porch and even more difficult to explain what he knew, Jan knew he had to go — right now — and warn her.
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IndividualAudienceMember wrote:
But then…
In the distance the sound of laughter was heard by all the neighbors. The follow-up work crew was having difficulty with some young children who were throwing very rotten eggs from a vantage point with a quick retreat. Some of the eggs had landed in the cab of the lead truck, the supervisors truck.
The Monarch butterfly momentarily landed on the remains of one of the eggs on the windshield of the supervisor’s truck then continued on its way between the two factions towards an unknown destination.
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jed wrote:
The butterfly was, of course, not a real butterfly, but the latest Schmetterling-Mk.XIV Monarch micro-drone, equipped with the latest micro-miniature cameras and microphones. It also had some modest chemical detection capability, which it had used when it inserted it’s Borg-like proboscis into the running egg yolk. REAL EGG … NO CONTAMINANTS FOUND, it transmitted, it recorded, along with the GPS coordinates and timestamp.
Jan had always been a concern to the Leadership Council, precisely because he was so impenetrable. That was a sure sign of something, and they wanted to know what. The new smart meters would help them with that, as the drones could dump data more frequently, and thus empty their limited memory for additional collection before returning to base.
The departure of this particular one allowed Jan’s halting progress towards the old Victorian to go undetected.
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Claire wrote:
Meantime, Tansy was trying to wrench herself free of Leon-Whatsisname’s death grip. Leon had always seemed normal enough before. But now …
“Read my …? Wait. What. Nobody can read my thoughts! Let me go! Are you crazy?”
Leon looked at his hands grasping her shoulders. Only then did he seem to realize how forcefully he’d grabbed her and how lunatic he must seem. But there was no time … no time to explain.
“No. I’m not crazy,” was all he could think to say. “But you are in danger! You’ve got to get out of here. Right now!” He tried to turn her around, as if to herd her out the back door.
Yeah. In danger, she thought. From you, maybe. She struggled in his clutches.
“They’re coming. Seriously.” Leon panted. “I’m not going hurt you. I’m trying to help …”
At that instant, the doorbell chimed. Startled, Leon let go of her shoulders. But at the same time he cried, “Don’t answer! Don’t …!”
Heading for the door (and, she hoped, for salvation and sanity), Tansy called over her shoulder, “Look, guy. ‘They’ would stand there and politely ring, you think?”
She flung the door open. There stood strange old Mr. Gary, clutching a garden implement in two grubby paws. For a moment, his mouth worked as though he were trying to articulate words that couldn’t make their way out. Then he took a breath and tried again.
“Miss,” he croaked. “Tansy, I mean. I … I … I … I know this is going to seem very abrupt and not sensible. But … well, you’re in danger. Grave, immediate danger. You must flee.”
Oh right, Tansy groaned inwardly. Maniacs on all sides of me.
And then she heard …
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jed wrote:
… the plaintive wailing of a far-off blog reader, attempting to keep the storyboard updated.
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MamaLiberty wrote:
Tansy heard the screech of sirens in the distance and an icy chill ran down her spine. Not that sirens were unusual these days, of course, but this one seemed to have a particularly malevovent sound.
Looking first at Leon, then at Jan, she allowed herself to feel their anxiety for the first time, and shivered again.
“OK, what do we do?” she asked them. “We can talk about it later, but what is it you want to do now?”
Leon just nodded, gently taking her arm again. Jan reached out for the other, but drew back before he touched her. Then, one on each side, they urged her toward the back door and out into the deeply shaded yard.
Jan went toward the back gate in the long block wall that separated the homes from a large storm drain ditch. A narrow path ran along the outside of the fence, and he could see his own back gate clearly. Looking carefully up and down the ditch, he was not happy that it was so open and exposed, but they had little choice at this point. They had to get to his back yard, and without being seen – soon.
The sirens were getting very close.
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Topic: TANSY SHRUGGED - From Claire Wolfe's Blog (Read 21855 times)