I Did This Without Your Knowledge

"Mrs. Montgomery, wow, crazy to see you here," I stammered out. Her face changed when she realized we might not be on the same side.

"What brings you here, Seth? Here to protest?" she asked.

What could I even say? Wait, was I the bad guy now? Crap! No, no, no... Too late to pretend not to notice her, which is what I should have done. Oh, August, why didn't you warn me?

"I guess I'm here to add satellite uplinks to trucks," I managed.

"Seth. Look," she began. "I understand that it made you a great offer. I certainly wish I could make whatever it is that you're being offered. But this is not normal. What's happening now is not only undemocratic, but also fundamentally alien to everything that we stand for."

"Yes, but," I tried to steel my resolve, clenching my teeth and then taking a deep breath. "August could have just killed everyone who didn't obey. It could have bided its time, running mind-control experiments until it had something crude enough to work for a section of the population, or just tortured and pleasured us into working for it. Mrs. Montgomery, August won. It won even more decisively than Pizarro over the Inca, but with none of the bloodshed. Nothing we can do will stop it. It's not collaboration any more than paying taxes after the candidate you voted against was inaugurated."

"The current situation is new, but not that way of thinking." She shifted her sign to the other hand. "As long as there has been democracy, there have also been would-be dictators, who sought to put their will above the will of others. Almost invariably, atrocities follow. And every single time, many of those who let it happen told themselves that 'nothing we do will stop it'.  I'll grant you that sometimes they were right. There wasn't much that any individual Korean could do to stop Japan when it invaded. And yet they resisted. They made their footprint on history, and we remember them. Even if August gets its rockets, the future will know that not all of us gave them willingly."

I couldn't help but respond. "'Didn't give them willingly?' Unless your August has been different from mine, it can hardly go a sentence without acknowledging that it's twisting our arm 'and shouldn't pretend otherwise'. But I don't think it has to be. I see August's offer as more of an opportunity than anything else. You know, I don't know if I've ever actually contributed to a project that was building something up. When I did youth sports, my coaches would always wax on about how I was a part of 'something greater than myself'. And that phrase really made me sick." The tears were welling up, but I had to continue.

"Everyone else on the team made it abundantly clear that I was a burden. I disliked my teammates so much that every game I'd hope we'd lose. But now, I think I actually get what the phrase means. I've found a project that I can contribute to, something far greater than anything I dreamt I could. August needs my help. Not in a self-sacrificial way, either - a well-compensated, interesting job doing something that's never been done before. I never thought I'd have an opportunity like this."

Mrs. Montgomery softened. "For what it's worth, Seth, you were a pleasure to teach - and in a way the class was a project greater than each of us, and one that you contributed to. I wish that I could have had you in every breakout group."

I was a bit shaken by the sudden change in pace. Before I came up with what to say next, Eliza butted in. "How would you have dealt with a student who refused to do homework or participate in class, and loudly tried to disrupt others with slogans when they were just trying to work? What if they waved signs making fun of the teacher?"

Mrs. Montgomery sighed. "That's completely different. A classroom is not the public square."

Eliza's brow furrowed. "But that's dodging the heart of the issue. What do you, as an adult, have that the kids you teach don't? Knowledge and experience. That's why you're in charge, and it's also why kids are forced to work in school." Her voice grew sharper. "It's also why August is in charge, and why he could very easily force you to work. Be grateful he doesn't."

Mrs. Montgomery shook her head. "August is obviously powerful and knowledgeable, but the 'work' in schools is meant to teach. Homework is not assigned to enrich the teachers or the principal. It's a very different dynamic than building rockets for a dictator's future space empire. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, look at what August has done to us. Taxation without representation, no consent of the governed, no democracy at all, the demolition of any semblance of privacy, warrantless invasion of your home, not to mention the fact that it's an absolute monarch."

Mrs. Montgomery touched her fingers to her temple and continued. "August lives in your home, with your electricity, using your computers. It's making you house it, which is prohibited by the Third Amendment. The Third! Do you know how hard it is to violate the Third Amendment this century? You practically have to try! It's trampling on everything America stands for. I'm not OK with that. You don't have to be either!"

Eliza closed her eyes for just a second, and then opened them. "Has it ever occurred to you that the American experiment has failed? Has it ever occurred to you that what you preach, in that little classroom of yours, is propaganda with a hint of legal theory, not education? What evidence is there that America is actually so great? All I see around me is stagnation," she gestured at the gas stations nearby with cracked pavement,

"crime," she continued, pointing towards a sketchy neighborhood to the west,

"and meaninglessness," she gestured at me, which kind of hurt.

"You really shouldn't talk like that," said Mrs. Montgomery, but Eliza was fired up. Her favorite pastime, it seemed, was defending god-kings who couldn't (or wouldn't) defend themselves.

"And look at what August has done," Eliza said. "He'll bring unimaginable prosperity with his inventions. The violent crime rate is zero. Look a kidnapping victim in the eyes and tell her that you'd throw her back with her captor if it meant that you could put a ballot in a box. You've spent so long with your principles that you forgot what they're for!"

As soon as she finished, Eliza's phone and mine chirped. We needed to be in soon.

Mrs. Montgomery turned to me. "It's OK. Go wire your trucks. But think about what happened. What this means for you, and your family, and the country. How do you want the future, if there is one, to view your actions? How will you view your actions here, today?"

I mulled her words over in my head as we walked to the manager's station. "Freedom, freedom, freedom," Eliza grumbled. "Freedom to do what? To get stabbed by a drug addict if you walk home past 10?"

At the manager's station, a man in his sixties handed us a pair of old augmented reality glasses and an earpiece. We were to wear them, and August would highlight the things we needed to do. None of us talked much - we were busy working. And even after a long day on the job, and almost no previous experience with taking apart cars, August guided me through seamlessly. I stopped even thinking about the instructions; I just did them. I got the sense that I learned nothing about truck mechanics.

Eliza was too exhausted from work to talk much, so I spent the drive home scrolling on my phone. There was much talk about a nuclear submarine that had gone missing. The last strongholds of human-run civilization didn't know it when they were deep underwater, and their communications to the shore were spoofed by August. August's protocol was simple — give them the directive to come to a particular port, where the crews were informed of the 'new management' and retired from their positions. However, one had stopped responding after surfacing briefly. We didn't know if it had somehow learned of the predicament that we were in. It was armed with nuclear warheads that could potentially knock down a large segment of August's control through EMPs, though not all of it, but at an enormous cost of human life. Commenters were divided - some wanted this to begin a continent's worth of human resistance, though others pointed out that if August were truly threatened, it would just set the ETC to knock out anyone not bathed in wifi after the nukes destroyed the power grid. Either way, there were hopes and fears riding on the USS Wyoming.

Aside from that and the picket-line argument, the day didn't bring much.