Eugena part 46 (The End)

Read part 45 here!

The reaction to the new pictures, of Bluff and his conquests, had an immediate and violent effect. Everything he’d been convincing our crowd of went straight out the window. I rushed to find Emma and Julie to make sure they were out of the way of the mob. It turned from rally to riot in seconds.

Strangled and varied screams erupted from the crowd as the images sunk in. Bluff, momentarily stunned by the new pictures, was struck silent. Regaining his composure about a minute later, he tried to calm the building storm with more weak photoshopped excuses, but he’d lost his handle on the situation. These pictures could not have been so easily manipulated, and even our fickle audience had picked up on that.

“Stop FF. Stop FF.” They chanted, getting louder with each repetition. My heart swelled for these people, these wonderful, peaceful people. Not one of them made a lunge for the police that had accompanied Bluff, although several threw things at the Senator himself. This was exactly the kind of action that I wanted to spread. Civil disobedience, not civil war.

Bluff, however, was in favor of only one thing; his accumulated power. And he wasn’t giving it up that easily. I didn’t hear the order he gave to the policemen standing dumbstruck around the stage, but they didn’t hesitate for long.

I threw Julie and Emma, who I’d corralled towards the edge of the stadium, to the floor. “They’re shooting! Everyone get down!”

The chanting cut off immediately, replaced by a serious of unified screams of terror. The policemen opened fire on the crowd randomly, not stopped when they started to stampede.

“Meg!” I heard my name, but in the confusion I had to hear it again to register. “MEG!”

“Decklan! Oh, thank god you’re ok.” I reached for him, but noticed that tears were streaming down his face. “What? What’s wrong?” My voice had an unpleasantly high edge to it.

“Andy. They got Andy.” He replied with a dead voice. Emma and Julie and I didn’t say a word. “He took the fire meant for this group of teenagers. They got away. He didn’t.”

Even amidst the chaos, my ears went deaf. Time didn’t seem to slow down, it seemed to absolutely stopped. For a moment, I was blinded by images of Andy laughing, Andy playing dolls with Emma patiently, Andy posing for Julie’s figure sketches. Andy, who was so full of love and happiness. Andy, who could find something beautiful in Senator Bluff if given the chance. Andy, the simple environmental science student.

I didn’t have time to scream, because Luke did it for me. With his gun and his rag tag group of “rally security”, he was firing back.

If all hell hadn’t broken loose before, it did now. “Luke, no!” I hollered, but my holler was drowned out by the stampede of terror. The crowd, previously content running away from the stage, were now caught between the gunfire from both sides.

“Luke!” I yelled again, running for him. “No! This isn’t the way! You’re making it worse!”

He heard the last part as I all but knocked him over as I screamed it at him. “If we don’t fight back, they’ll kill more people!” he raged back, taking aim again.

“So will you!” I argued loudly.

“Meg, we can’t just sit here and let them shoot innocent civilians!”

“There… there has to be a better way.” I gasped, struggling to maintain control of myself. The blood smearing the floor around me was making me dizzy and unstable.

I looked back to Julie and Emma, who were being held back by Decklan. They were both shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear them. I started back to them, but they shook their little heads violently. Switching tactics, they began pointing behind me until I finally understood. They wanted me to go on stage.

“No. Way. In. Hell.” I said to myself, shaking my head at them. But their pantomimes only got more violent, before I realized that they were right. If I didn’t say something soon, more people would die, and they wouldn’t all be at the hands of the Senator. And I couldn’t stand to have more blood on my hands.

It took surprisingly little time to maneuver my way onto the stage, as most people were attempting to get as far away from it as possible. Bluff was still standing with the microphone in his hand, seemingly catatonic with shock at how the situation had unravelled. Without stopping to think, I grabbed the end of the microphone in one hand and lashed a hard kick at his stomach, separating him from the technology. I turned up the volume on the bottom of the microphone and yelled at the top of my lungs, “STOP.”

To my great surprise, the booming of my voice as it echoed off the walls was enough to shock everyone into halting their actions. Even the police shooters turned to me, possibly relieved to end their mass murder.

With everyone watching me expectantly, I was suddenly stricken with major stage fright, but the thought of the riot made me start talking.

“What in the hell does everyone think they’re doing?” I asked angrily, sweeping my gaze across the arena. “You, policemen. Since when did your jobs require you to murder peaceful petitioners at random?” The lot of them at least had the decency to look ashamed, even stricken. “And you, my comrades in rebellion. Don’t you remember what this day was supposed to be about?” I pointed to the large mural hanging behind the stage, a collaborative piece from Julie and her artist Outlier friends. It depicted two hands clasped in an eternal grip. “It was supposed to be about stopping this stupid, senseless violence. It was supposed to be the spread of knowledge, not bullets. What gave you the idea that it was ok to stoop to their level?

“Don’t you understand what he’s doing?” I kicked at Bluff, who was still sitting on the floor in surprise. “He’s making us look like what he’s trying to hide about himself. At the end of the day, no one would have remembered who started shooting. The only thing they’ll know is that people died because we wanted to play some music and share some art. And our cause will be marred with death and blood and pain, as if it isn’t already.” I threw a disparaging look at Bluff. “Those pictures, although I wish I didn’t have to clarify, were one hundred percent real. I wouldn’t even let my technologically savvy comrades enhance the lighting.”

I took another long look across the scene in front of me. “Six years ago, I was five points on an IQ test short of the privilege to live. I wasn’t seen as useful to society, so in an effort to control population, I was sentenced to death. I was fifteen feet from the gas chamber that my best friend perished in before I got the idea to run. Maybe you don’t personally know anyone who failed the test. Or maybe you do. But is anyone prepared to argue with me that this system is justified in any way? The poor socioeconomic decisions of our ancestors is not an excuse to enslave children for being bad test takers.”

Bluff had stood up again, his wide chest heaving not two feet away from me. Instead of stepping away, I turned straight into him, holding his eye contact. The deafening silence returned until I decided to break it.

“The way I see it, Senator Bluff, you have two options. You either shoot me with that gun you’ve been trying to hide in that holster under your suit jacket and continue the random slaughter of innocent and peaceful citizens, or you can get the hell out of our way.”

~~~~~~~~

Author’s Note:

OK! FINISHED! Whew. Next Friday I’ll do a Q&A (if there are enough Qs for me to A) about the now finished first draft of Eugenia. Ask any clarification questions you require, or just give me feedback. I will also probably have to write a bit on why I feel like the ambiguity of the ending is justified for the genre in which this book is written. But feel free to ask about it anyways.

What would REALLY be helpful is if you could leave comments on each “part” that you see a need for editing, because Eugenia is FAR from over. This is, keep in mind, my very, VERY first draft, and it’s subject to change quite a lot. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Love, Bri