- AM -

Frank walked out of a coffee shop, intensively yawning while holding a steaming takeout cup in his hand, when two familiar voices called out to him. Turning around, he saw with surprise the strangely-clad siblings that he met a week ago, running to him with big smiles.

“Tom? Mas… Maz… Ma...” he greeted in return, still stumbling on the sister’s name.

“Mad,” she corrected with a smile.

“Mind if we join you in your walk?” Tom added pleasantly.

“Go right ahead. Mature company will do some good,” Frank said half-jokingly.

“Heh?” Madzistrale wondered.

“Nothing,” Frank smiled. “How are you guys doing?”

“Relatively well,” Tom answered.

“When we’re not attacked by some lunatic orange-haired guy,” Madzistrale added, looking morose.

“You got attacked?! When?”

“Oh, awhile ago. It was a bit our fault, we were trespassing,” Tom quickly rectified, throwing a glance at his sister. Don’t tell him why, it’ll only worry him for no reasons, his glare was as clearly as words telling her; she realized her near-mistake and gave him a small understanding nod.

“Strange… a man inquired about you guys two days ago,” Frank added, glimpsing worryingly around him.

“Really? About what? Who?” Madzistrale asked.

“Some police officer. A strange man, if you ask me, but when he’s police, you don’t really argue...”

“Are we in trouble?” Tom asked with a small laugh.

“Oh no, don’t worry. He just wanted to know if I knew you guys, and why you did what you did at the plaza last week. Considering the former was no, and the latter was that you saved me from a beating, it didn’t took him long to go… Which is the truth. I mean, thank you for what you did, but I don’t really know you.” He looked at them with a small inquiring gaze before continuing: “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re as strange as that cop, so…”

“He was strange? How?” Tom inquired.

“I don’t really know… Little things. He repeated questions, but in the exact same way, you know? He was also curious about silly things, like a rubber duck my kids had… Oh, he was also curious about that medicine you gave me, Mad.” He shrugged, like a man out of his league. “I can’t really say… He just looked and acted weird, that’s all...”

Tom and Madzistrale looked at each other with the same thought. They had once read files with Gabzryel about some encounters with strange officers.

“Was he by any chance… I don’t know… bald, no eyebrows, and dressed in black?” Madzistrale asked half-jokingly.

Frank laughed.

“Nope. Far off, lady. He was blond all around, and dressed in pale gray, a bit like the military civilians. Which is another odd thing… I don’t recall the Columbus police having those uniforms...”

“So what exactly frightens you about this President Bohm?” Tom suddenly asked him, giving voice to the real reason the siblings joined Frank in his walk.

Frank looked around fearfully.

“Not much, really.”

“Wanna talk at your house?” Madzistrale suggested softly.

Frank seized them again.

“Why are you interested?”

“Because we have a feeling something’s very wrong. Rather, someone else confirmed that feeling; so we want to help if we can.”

“Come on, then; the kids are at school, so we’ll be in peace,” Frank lead them out of the plaza.

**********************

“It started about a year ago. This party AAP, the Anti-Authoritarian Party, sprang up out of nowhere. Robert Bohm was a relatively unknown Senator; yet, he managed to garner 73% of the population’s favours within his first month as running candidate. Despite centuries-old parties as opponents, his less-than-one-year AAP won. Never in history something like that happened!”

The siblings and Frank were seated around the latter’s kitchen island, cups of coffee steaming. Madzistrale tentatively took a sip, but immediately grimaced.

“Tastes like dry mud,” she discreetly whispered to Tom. He nodded, and pushed aside his cup as discreetly as possible.

“That’s strange. How did he won? He must have promised a lot,” Tom said.

“Yeah, pretty much everything the Uni States desired. More money to the poor; harsher environmental regulations; upholding of the Washington Directives, including the controversial 2nd Directive; more flexible regulations regarding culture, speech, religion, etc.”

Tom thought deeply, and Madzistrale took over.

“And you feel like it’s not right?”

Frank sat back on his stool, passing his hand in his hair.

“I normally wouldn’t have thought that something would be wrong. But things haven’t been right ever since he got elected. People are getting crazier, you know? I’m not just being paranoid; people are getting crazier. Look what happened just because I said something was wrong with the government. They were ready to beat me to death for that. The worst thing, the police is doing absolutely nothing. Ever since Bohm’s election, murder rate got up by 5%! It’s a lot 5% in three months! But fewer criminals are getting arrested. It’s like the police is sitting on their ass while the world falls apart… Things aren’t just normal any longer…”

“We noticed,” Tom said. “No one stopped us when my sister shot a potentially lethal projectile in the plaza.”

“Exactly!”

“And the cameras. Why spy if you want to let people do as they wish?”

“And why is the government letting people do as they wish? History has shown again and again that too much freedom result in catastrophic chaos,” Madzistrale added grimly.

“And it’s the ‘Anti-Authoritarian’ part that bothers me,” Frank added. “The last 40 years of my life has been with governments anything else than authoritarian… It’s like… it’s like Bohm had every single words and ideals just perfectly right.

» You know, I don’t want to be like those people, always looking behind their shoulders and being paranoid like hell, as if the whole world is a conspiracy against people… but at the same time, how can any of us not wonder what the heck is happening?”

Tom was thinking.

“We definitively need to see that Bohm.”

“Good luck with that,” Frank laughed; he then paused, thinking. “You might be able however to get some information from the Public Relations Advisor. He was a great and memorable professor, always knowledgable. Him becoming the Public’s Advisor was probably the only good thing that came out of Bohm’s election.”

“What’s his name?” Madzistrale asked, taking out a notepad, silently amazed she had one in her bars’ pockets.

“Abraham Solomon. He was a Psychology teacher at the Columbus University that my sister attended. Always had amazing insights. We kinda have high hopes that he might be able to do some good around, even if the President won’t.”

“Then, we know who we’ll go talk to!” Tom said, rising from his seat, his sister following. “Sorry for barging into your morning, Frank. Thanks for indulging our questions, but we should really go and let you have your morning back!”

Frank smiled widely, and shook their hands. “Hey, it’s me that has to say that. I haven’t really been able to say anything to anyone. It was freeing to finally talk about it.”

“We’ll get back to you when we get some good news,” Tom winked, before leading his sister out.

She waved goodbye, and Frank waved back. As he watched them walking away, he smiled at their attitudes. They were still strange, but he felt it was finally in a good way.

“Good luck,” he said softly, before closing the door.