Chapter 4

April 29th, 2024. Merjan Younis.

Merjan Younis had just turned eight. She was glad her Grade 2 block was getting a new math teacher — Mrs. Kemmler had been really strict. The new guy seemed interesting, if a bit weird — a scruffy dude with his hair in a bun. He spoke and moved the way she imagined she must sometimes speak and move — the way that had caused her mum to stop buying Fruit Loops.

“Hello, everyone! Isn’t it an amazing day today? I sure think it’s an amazing day today! I’m George Havelock, your new math teacher, and we’re all going to work together to make math fun again! Did you know there are secret Nazis all around you every day, in your daily lives? Well, for today’s special exercise, we’re going to count them! You can all count, right?”

Merjan frowned. She had a feeling this class was going to be weird...

April 29th, 2024. Julie Lambert.

The DEO hijacked Julie’s first-period Social Studies to show a film — “The Problem of Whiteness”. Julie listened carefully to the narrator’s choice of words and condescending tone, and found she couldn’t help but believe he felt it was a problem that merited a final solution. Wait, that’s a fucked-up far-right conspiracy theory now, isn’t it? Did it come from films like this? If it didn’t, Julie thought, the film could only serve to strengthen it.

The film was hysterical. Not funny, mind you — hysteria-inducing. So many interviews with Proud Stoic Black People You Are Supposed To Admire, slowly breaking down as they’re asked to relate stories of microaggressions and the emotional impact of being exposed to ethnic slurs. So many tight close-ups of black faces starting to cry, or almost-cry. It was like watching a weird, low-key version of a torture porn film. It didn’t want to let you think about the ideas it was presenting — it was too concerned with emotions. It was an ordeal to sit through, like nails on a chalkboard. It was kind of funny if you knew what a dutch angle was and why cinematographers use them, mind you — about half of the film was shot that way.

It made Julie feel sick. She glanced around the classroom. Other students looked sick or dizzy too. She closed her eyes, and listened very carefully. There was a very low, almost imperceptible rhythmic bass thrum in the background of the film’s audio track. Infrasound! It was hard to pick out unless you knew what it was — but it was there. What a sleazy trick. Low-frequency sounds could make people feel nauseated or induce anxiety — or forcibly make them more emotionally involved with what they were seeing. The French rape-revenge shock film Irréversible had made use of it to make the audience more viscerally repulsed by what they were seeing — so it was legal, even if it really shouldn’t be. Since then it had shown up in several especially intense horror films. Spotting it in an alleged documentary was a bit of an eye-opener, though.

This really was brushing up against actual brainwashing tactics! Julie had better mental discipline than mundanes, though. She wondered if some kind of accusation could be made against the DEO or the film’s director. She’d probably sound like a kook if she tried, though — and it wasn’t like she could record the film easily. Diversity trainers were notoriously secretive with their class materials. She mentally recited an exorcism chant from the Eleusinian Mysteries to drive back the film’s evil influence on her psyche. Hekas, Hekas, Este Bebeloi! Hekas, Hekas, Este Bebeloi! Her composure improved and the nausea faded. She was a lot more worried about the less psychologically self-actualized members of the class, however, and vowed to try to do some damage control when class let out.

Julie learned things watching the DEO’s films, though. She learned that white supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when the focus is put on getting the ‘right’ answer. She remembered Bhopal, and really hoped engineers in African nations didn’t take the film’s message to heart. Pressure vessel ratings were one of the many, many cases where math does, in fact, have right and wrong answers. Julie decompiled the logic in her mind. They ... were they actually saying black kids couldn’t do math? Anti-racism training — now with 57% more old-fashioned, honest-to-god racism!

This film wasn’t even the most ill-considered stunt-class the DEO had set up. At least high school students had some level of emotional defenses and critical thinking skills. The DEO had drag queens in to tell stories to Grade 3 students back in January. Based on how the queens presented themselves visually, they must have wanted to teach them a very important lesson about tolerance and understanding — namely, that gender-bending turns you into a scary demon clown. Undoubtably this would help support trans rights in some esoteric manner that one needs to have a queer studies doctorate (and be a registered Democrat) to truly understand. Transwomen the world over must have felt so grateful to them.

MWA was talking about segregating classes now, like they did in Cali. They called it “racial affinity groups”. It was scary shit. The likely reason they hadn’t to date was insufficient black students — Bentonville was really white, demographically. If they did, it wouldn’t be so bad for Julie, mind you — she’d miss chatting with Brock Ellis in Physics 30 and Chinese Bonnie in her English — but it would be a nightmare for the elementary students.

Think about it: the black kids and the white kids get separated, and get given teachers of their own ethnicity. (What about the biracial ones? Are they seriously bringing back the One Drop Rule?) The black teachers would tell the black pupils about all the terrible things white people did to their kin throughout history, and how whites were responsible for their poverty now. Everything bad in their personal lives could ultimately be blamed on whites, on oppression. There would be great short-term results in terms of minority solidarity, activist engagement and apparent indoctrination.

But the black kids, being elementary students with elementary maturity levels, would go beat up the white students at recess. Kids are kids, after all. That’s what they do when authority figures tell them someone is responsible for everything wrong with their lives. The faculty would ignore it. Bad optics. So the white kids would learn that they have to rely on each other, creating mutual association groups by race at an age when their brains were still forming. They would learn to always be polite verbally, of course. Slurs and racist jokes would vanish, but much worse things would quietly grow up in their place. And when this generation of elementary students came of age ten to fifteen years from now, well...

The woke education system was building exactly the world the alt-right wanted to live in. Julie didn’t think you needed a transhuman intellect to predict that, either. They’ll stay compliant and intimidated by dogma and white guilt until they don’t. By then, it will be too late to fix it. Didn’t these idiots understand that black nationalism and white nationalism are intrinsically comorbid? You cannot foster one without fostering the other! For that matter, had they even heard of reactance? Hell, these chucklefucks probably still thought those DARE commercials saved hordes of kids from the perils of drug addiction!

It didn’t matter. It was good PR and boosted activist momentum. That was all the DEO cared about. Of course, activism was innately biased toward action over ethics or critical thinking — it’s right there in the name. Racism is horrifying! Something needs to be done about it! Well, this sure is something, so let’s do it!

Didn’t anyone else see how fucked up this was? Julie glanced around the classroom awkwardly. Actually, lots of people seemed to. Everyone was just too scared to speak up — including, on some level, Julie herself. At least, she knew how stupid and unproductive it would be. Some white students looked upset, timid or guilty — the intended response, Julie assumed. More, though, either looked seethingly angry or self-consciously bored and jaded. Brett Tollard was white-knuckled with rage, and even blond jokester Troy maintained a contemptuous slouch-pose that seemed brittle and forced to Julie’s careful gaze. Pink Highlights Bonnie looked like she was struggling not to throw up.

Julie glanced over at Deon, the only black student in the class. She’d always thought he was seriously cute — he had a flat top, 70s-style circular wire-rimmed glasses, smooth dark skin and deep hazel eyes. Deon dressed nicely, and often wore a bow-tie to class as an eccentric fashion statement. He was both thoughtful and somewhat athletic — she’d seen him working out shirtless once, and enjoyed the view. He was slender and wiry, with a subtle rather than bulky kind of musculature, and the ever-popular designer stubble.

He was apparently into sculpting and sketching, which grouped him loosely into the arty kids’ clique — and he wasn’t into theatre, glee club or drama (in either sense) which insured he’d never be too popular even in that clique. Pity; he was in the 90th percentile for common sense, self-discipline and personal dignity by the standard those brats set. Deon and Julie had talked about pencil-work in the past; it was how she got to know him — though her own sketches were painfully amateur compared to his work. It gave them something in common, though. Julie pegged him as semi-woke, with at least somewhat nuanced views of different issues — he pretty much had to be a bit woke. Black kids enforced it on each other.

Usually, he had a quiet confidence and poise Julie really admired. Now, though? No so much. He looked starkly terrified. After they’d shown other films similar to this, or done a privilege walk, Craig Hoskins — one of the more macho, gangsta-idolizing black kids — looked really smug and walked with a swagger. He was a moron, though. Deon was right to be nervous. It was the rational response to anything that served to heighten racial tensions to this degree from anyone of any color. We’re townies, damn it! This isn’t Chicago! We don’t need hate crimes here!

Julie felt her heart pound and tried to center herself. As superior as she thought she was at times, she wasn’t immune to the tension in the classroom. Atah Malkuth ve-Geburah ve-Gedulah le-Olahm. Thou art the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever unto the ages. Maybe something more blunt. Hod over Netzach. Hod over Netzach. It didn’t do much good — her rational-analytical Hod-mind was just as disturbed as her passionate Netzach-essence.

Damage control needed to be done. Julie approached Deon in the corridor after the class. Her tone was carefully conversational — casual and airy. “You seemed as nervous during that as I felt.”

“Yeah, uh ... I think everyone was. That film was pretty whack.”

Julie laughed. “No kidding, right? Deeply manipulative. I knew it was fucked up, though. I mean, you’re way better at math than I am — among lots of other things.”

Deon laughed nervously, looking around to see if there were any DEO sympathizers around before speaking more quietly. “It kinda insulted your entire race with the whole ‘be less white’ thing. I just wanna make sure everyone knows I’m not on board with that. I don’t protest ‘cause of shit like that video — I just want cops to stop killing us.”

He seemed really jumpy. Julie felt just as tense, but she had a way better poker face. She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, god, yeah. Everyone knows, and if they don’t I’ll make sure they do. You’re too sane for that video. And I thought it was pretty insulting to you too, honestly — it’s hard to assign traits like ‘individualism’ and ‘punctuality’ by skin color without being like super racist to both sides of the equation. I just wanted to make sure you know we’re not angry at you for that film, and we hope you aren’t angry at us either. We’re good, aren’t we?”

“Yeah! Oh, god, yeah! So good! Let’s forget we ever saw it!”

Her voice took on a more playful, breathy tone, and she stepped into his personal space. At five seven, he had to look up to hold her gaze — he did avoid looking other obvious places; she wouldn’t have minded but still admired his discipline. “Although, if you do think there’s anything students like me need to atone for, any appropriate kind of service we could perform for students like you...”

Deon blushed furiously — she could see it in the body language, even if not on his dark skin — and stammered. Julie thought there was some ineffable quality about him that suggested he would be an insightful, patient and sensual lover. She’d gotten into his dreams once, early in her adventures, but had bailed right away. He’d been going steady with Samantha Osei back then, but they broke up in February. She hoped he’d dream of her again some night she did the spell. “Oh, Deon. I’m just playing around. Sorry to embarrass you.”

They both laughed. He had a boner; she pretended not to notice, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “You’re sweet, Deon. Come hang out with the Angels any time. We shouldn’t let DEO bullshit wreck our normal social lives.”

Flirting was good. In addition to sowing more dreams, it defused tensions. Now she just had to go talk to the Stallions; especially Brett — make sure they knew who they should be angry at, and more importantly who they shouldn’t. Christ, knowing Troy I’ll need to explain that ‘be less white’ does not constitute permission to come to school in blackface!

Julie still felt faintly nauseous two and a half hours later when she sat down with her friends (and Jen, who kept trying to play both sides of the DB/Julie schism) for lunch. It wasn’t because there were apparently hamsters running amuck in the cafeteria again, either. At least, not entirely. She came into the conversation mid-way.

Jen frowned. “You’re hanging out with Toshia now?”

The cheerleaders, minus DB and Rich Bonnie, sat together at their usual table in the lunchroom. 80s-hair Bonnie shrugged. “She knows lots of places to get wicked clothes cheap. I like her fashion sense.”

8HB was being uncharacteristically nice. Everyone thought Decepticon Bonnie was nice; her outward demeanor was all sugar and social conscience. No one outside the Angels would suspect that about 80s-hair Bonnie. She was the ice queen — gorgeous and glamourous, but also famous for her brutal, sassy putdowns and always acting above others.

Yet she was rarely genuinely cruel to people — it was a subtle thing to notice, but it was there. The only guys she wouldn’t dish a brutal rejection at were the ones that seemed to be genuinely emotionally vulnerable. She had cutting appearance-based put-downs for most of her fellow Angels, yet never pulled that with obese or depressed students. Rather than being an actual bitch, she was in love with the image of bitchiness itself. She was the Ice Queen, the smug fashion-plate, the arrogant one. She was a total Veronica.

Julie could see her chatting with Toshia about fashion, though, even if their aesthetics were really different. 8HB’s eponymous feature was her high-volume mane of frizzy, platinum blonde hair with the whale-spout on top. She tended to tight pink sweaters, pearl necklaces and expensive blazers — when she got to university, Julie was sure everyone would assume she was in a sorority regardless of any inconvenient facts on the matter.

“Isn’t she in with the DEO?”

“Don’t do that,” Chinese Bonnie said sharply. “Don’t judge Toshia — don’t judge any minority — by the gratuitous dipshittery pulled by narcissistic activists claiming to represent them.”

Julie flinched slightly at the mention of narcissists, but nobody noticed.

Pink Highlights Bonnie looked wired. She’d seemed that way since about a week after she got back from her suspension — she was always a bit high-strung, but this was a new level. “It’s not about Toshia as a person. Would any of you want to socialize with a student who carried a loaded handgun everywhere they went? Of course not. It’s dangerous; you’d feel unsafe. Toshia may not have asked for a gun, but she has one — metaphorically, at least. Sure, she seems like a nice person. Then some stupid girl-clique drama happens that everyone would just get over next week in a sane world, and she makes a complaint to the DEO, and one of us gets expelled. Worse, they get mobbed on social media, ending their career prospects. Toshia may not want to be dangerous to us, but she is anyway.”

One typically expects school wokeness to flow up from radical activists to pressure more conservative or cautious administrators — as it tended to in big coastal schools, where around a third of the student body was woke and another third feigned it for social status or due to peer pressure. But MWA, and Bentonville overall, didn’t work like that. Ensconced in a veritable womb of woke capital, it was a blue-led company town in a deeply red state; even much of the Gen Z student body was either apolitical or mildly conservative. Wokeness flowed downhill from Alison Dikscheide and her DEO, an imposed and unwanted ideology. Due to both the lost year and her overall heavy-handedness, resentment positively seethed. It disappointed Julie to see innocents like Toshia suffer blowback from that, but she knew it was pretty much inevitable.

Julie reached out and touched PHB’s hand, trying to use body language to soften her words. “You’re suggesting that people shun the school’s only openly trans student. That’s actual and overt discrimination.”

Julie didn’t think of Toshia as in with the DEO, as ‘one of them’. She didn’t dye her hair some neon color, ramble about oppression, vandalize corner stores to get anarchist cred or pick some post-modernist pronouns designed to make her identity the center of every conversation. She was just a shy student that wanted to live life as a girl, and that was no skin off Julie’s back. Julie talked to her every now and then, but they weren’t close friends. Julie talked to everyone; Toshia was fairly withdrawn and kept to herself.

She still had presence and style, though. In spite of being a bit plump, she could turn heads on her dress sense alone. She once wore a Jeff Hamilton Ridge Street lambskin jacket with H&M pinstripe dress pants and an Isabel Marant baseball cap to school — and carried it off. Julie wasn’t exactly a fashionista, but she couldn’t help but respect any girl who could pull that off. It wasn’t even like her parents were loaded — she searched for second hand high-label clothes on eBay and in thrift stores. They shared a love of antiques and had trawled garage sales together. Toshia’s fashion statements made her aloof and unapproachable, which is what Julie suspected Toshia wanted. People still left her alone, but there was a strand of respect to balance the contempt and discomfort.

PHB winced. “I’m ... I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying, we have to be so careful. It isn’t about Toshia really. They have it out for us specifically. A quiet trans girl doesn’t really advance Dikscheide’s ‘smash the gender binary’ thing, so they’re zeroing in on us. I mean, the Stallions and Angels. We’re some of the most beautiful and traditionally feminine girls in this school. You know — patriotic, sweet, as American as apple pie. And we’re popular. Really, the only serious prom contenders are Julie and DB. We would be laughing stocks in a modern Cali school, but here we’re still popular. The Stallions are ... well, the name pretty much covers it. Macho. Masculine.”

80s-hair Bonnie shot a fiery glance at a group of Stallions across the cafeteria, licked her glossy lips and grinned. “You could even say deliciously masculine.”

Much giggling and footsie ensued. PHB waited patiently for it to die down before she continued speaking. “The purple-haired freaks don’t like that. It’s not like this is either hypothetical or secret, either — you can read Dikscheide’s wordy editorials about how both names are oppressive and archaic on the school website. She shut down the paper that rebutted them. Feminists were talking strong social constructionism long before the word ‘transgender’ entered common parlance. Anyone remember back when it was ‘transsexual’ instead?”

“Yes, yes,” Julie said, trying to calm PHB. “I’ve read Gender Trouble too—”

PHB grabbed Julie’s arm, given her some Grade A crazy eyes. “Then you know! You understand the roots of this ... this Butlerian Jihad! It isn’t really about the 1.6% of the population that’s trans. It never was. They’re just the excuse — a wedge issue to frame it as being about human rights and bigotry instead of forced cultural change. Think about it. It’s just too big to be. I mean, Puerto Rico is 1% of the American population and those guys aren’t even allowed to vote. Look at the amount of time they get in the news cycle, compared to this gender shit.

“It’s about changing the concept of gender in society overall — and I sure as fuck don’t mean in a ‘marketplace of ideas’ kind of way! They want to establish themselves as the Cultural Authority that disseminates ideas to the proles and enforces them with terror and groupthink. The Stallions and Angels basically are the gender binary, and our popularity is a threat to their worldview and their agenda, so we’re slated to be canceled. They just need to find an excuse. I’m not actually joking about this.”

Julie found it ironic that PHB had apparently taken up a crusade on behalf of girly-girls, given that of the core Angels she fit the role the least. The winsome cheerleader was strikingly beautiful, but hardly as conventional in her look as DB, 80s-hair Bonnie, Nora or even Julie herself. She was a slender five-two featherweight, with A-cups and a neatly coiffed, raven-black bowl-cut offset by her eponymous neon pink ‘money piece’ highlights. She had pierced nipples, a square face, thin sensual lips and crystal blue eyes that flashed with cleverness.

She always dressed in black, and it was usually full-covering — though when her confidence was up, it could be a really tight full covering, and occasionally even faintly fetishy with a gratuitous misuse of black leather belts. She’d told Julie she modeled her look on Quorra, from Tron Legacy (sans the highlights, obviously), but Julie’d never seen the flick. To Julie’s eyes, her presentation was more ‘hot raver chick’ than ‘all-American sweetheart’. The fact that she was so jumpy and energetic, and interested in so many eclectic and offbeat things, only added to that impression.

When PHB finally finished, 80s-hair Bonnie fixed her with a slow stare. “You think about weird shit way too much. I mean, it’s 2024. Who the fuck actually reads books anymore? Pinkie, if you keep this up, you won’t be cool enough to sit at this table any more. So don’t do that. Just chill and forget about it. Pretend it isn’t there. Focus on enjoying life — the world will fix itself.”

Julie rolled her eyes at 8HB, hating the ‘ostrich approach’ — but she didn’t actually say anything. PHB seemed a bit unhinged, but she also had a point — Julie knew the DEO had it in for the Angels and Stallions. More saliently, though, her spiel was (despite being desperate and paranoid) very well thought out — it clearly wasn’t something that was coming to her just now. Was she involved with Marvin and the AFHU controversy? PHB and Marvin did chat occasionally, Julie knew. Of the Angels, she was by far the most ‘in’ with the geek clique. But she didn’t want to discuss that now, in the public cafeteria with all the other Angels around. Especially not with Jen around. She’d corner her friend later and discuss it privately — and figure out how it might impact both her own campaign and the Angels as a team.

PHB stared at Jen with increasingly agitated contempt. “I wish things were headed toward a temperate center, but face it: that’s not the reality on the ground. Instead of any kind of rational compromise, we’re letting each side have all their worst ideas. We already have a world where having a miscarriage gets you 1-4 while abortion gets you SuperMax, and taxpayer-funded drag queens teach six-year-olds how to pole dance! Because why not build the stupidest of all possible worlds? Compromise is for those wussy sane people! We’re DUH-merican! We can have all the bad ideas, all the time! 24/7 culture war lunacy, motherfuckers! It’s not just coming, it’s HERE!”

Chinese Bonnie winced, looking around for DEO collaborators in a faintly paranoid manner. Pink Highlights Bonnie had raised her voice and gestured wildly near the end of her rant, and now a good portion of the cafeteria had stopped to stare at the cheerleaders’ table. She ‘got’ it now, and looked sheepish.

80s-hair Bonnie glared. “Pinkie? Decaf. Seriously. And if I catch you watching Crowder or Maddow on your phone at school again, I swear to god I will put you over my knee and spank you.”

Chinese Bonnie grinned. “Now that I want to see.”

Everyone laughed.

80s-hair Bonnie took PHB’s hand. “Just because Donny seems less ... whatever the fuck he was before, it doesn’t mean we need someone else to fill in and take up Old Donny’s slack, kay?”

Julie nodded. “I like manly men and soft women myself. That doesn’t stop me from coexisting with people into androgyny or gender subversion. It just means I don’t want to date them. I even helped them set up that metrosexual enby-fashion show thing back in January, because why not?”

Pink Highlights Bonnie glared, but spoke softly. “I don’t care when people are non-binary; I care when they want all of society to be non-binary with them! They want to force us and the Stallions out of prominence because we’re a bad example, we are binary, our gender isn’t fluid! That’s the point of drag queens in classrooms — Butler said as much back in 1990, and society finally got radicalized enough to actually do it! It’s mocking femininity, attacking our identity.

“And it’s why Title IX says cheerleading isn’t a ‘real’ sport! They don’t want girls to learn to be sex symbols, and they can’t comprehend that it can be simultaneously skillful, ornamental and athletic! They wanted to make sure cheerleading didn’t become the most popular women’s sport, and they were willing to put girls in hospitals to achieve that! Tell me you think anyone associated with the DEO wants any kind of ideological coexistence! They assimilate! They want everyone to believe what they believe, speak as they speak, value what they value!”

The atmosphere at the table suddenly got sharp. Before it was just the squad’s quirky girl having a quirky freakout, but Title IX is not a topic one mentions casually among cheerleaders.

“I don’t disagree,” Julie said, trying to sound calming. “I feel the same anger, dread and anxiety you do. Really, believe me, I do. But you need to master it and direct it with care and wisdom. Dikscheide wants us to pick a side. She profits as much from binary politics as she does from non-binary genders. You know that — you got suspended for pointing it out. To her, the world is black and white; the woke versus the bigots. It’s insidious. We can’t be goaded into playing out her script. We don’t have to pursue a cultural hegemony just because they are. We don’t have to control the narrative. We can work toward an uncontrolled narrative.”

PHB was shivering, then, rocking back and forth. When she replied, it was a soft whisper. “The system is coming apart, Julie. Entropy always wins in the end. The center cannot hold. It wears away beneath the momentum of a Cyclopean pendulum-blade swinging left and right, left and right, lower and lower each time until it slices into flesh below it and blood sprays out everywhere. It’s not stopping just ‘cause the blood starts sprayin’, either. It’ll just keep going until we get our mountain of skulls, driven back and forth day after day by mobs of narcissists with smart phones and the dopamine economy they’ve built. That is the legacy our generation will leave to this world.”

Julie flinched. That was the second mention of narcissism in the conversation. She remembered admiring herself in a towel in her mirror, jokingly thinking she might be a narcissist. It didn’t seem as funny now. Am I part of the problem? Am I causing this, just by pursuing my dream of being popular?

Before Julie could respond, the tense conversation was interrupted by a cute little kid tugging on Chinese Bonnie’s skirt. Julie blinked. She was Amed’s little sister, wasn’t she? Grade Two. Sure, in theory, Magnolia West Elementary was technically in the same big brutalist brick cube as MWA, but the younger kids weren’t supposed to wander the high school area. There were big fire doors that were normally kept locked.

“Hi! I’m Merjan Younis. You hang out with Amed, right?”

“Yeah. Nice to meet you, Merjan. I’m Bonnie Liu.”

They shook hands, Bonnie kneeling down to reach eye-level with the diminutive second grader.

“Okay, so you count as friends or family then,” Merjan said promptly. “Are you a secret Nazi?”

“Well, I ... uh ... what?”

“Mr. Havelock, our new math teacher, gave us an assignment to count secret Nazis among our friends and family and write a report on them to give to him. Then we’ll all get together and denounce them in class.”