Pralaya (An Anticipatory Story) 1:3

SEASON 1, EPISODE 3

The Petworth Mural (image by Bill Herndon)

Courtesy of the Creative Commons license. No changes made.

From Christopher L. Fici, Ph.D

The next weird thing that happened that day was I was kidnapped.

It was a little later in the morning. Out for another communication with the smoke. Phone signals were also mostly down and out. Wifi mostly down and out. I’m a little nervous going outside when it appears some shit is hitting some kind of fan. Nevertheless I have a mad case of nature-deficit disorder and fresh air always beckons.

Immediately when I step outside three more helicopters of the apocalypse fly about 100 feet over my head. The noise nearly gives me a stroke.

I hear a car pull into the east side of the back alley, about a block away from me. I don’t see the car but I hear it. I walk a few steps carefully in the other direction. Suddenly my phone (and Auntie’s phone up above in the balcony) buzzes with that strange shriek of the emergency broadcast system.

It keeps shrieking. No message is forthcoming. Suddenly I hear another shriek: brakes slam, a hood is over my head, and I’m shoved into the back of a van.

What does one experience in those kinds of moments? When everything is ruptured, when death might be immediately beyond that hood?  Somehow I remembered to chant Hare Krishna in my head, the holy mantra of the Divine, even if I no longer went to any Krishna temples or believed in much of anything anymore. 

We drove around for about 25 minutes. It felt like we had gone north but were circling around Silver Spring maybe? We pull up very sharply and stop. The hood comes off. Immediately they identify themselves.

“We are with the NSA. We had your name and address on a list. We have a lot of facial recognition hits of you in this neighborhood. Have you recently purchased a book entitled “How to Blow Up a Pipeline?” Have you recently written three Medium articles and submitted an essay to Jacobin about this book “How to Blow Up a Pipeline?”

How strange and legalesesy that he keeps repeating the title of the book. It’s not a question of how they know this. It’s the on the frontis of my Google search. I’m surprisingly testy in my mind for being held hostage. Why do they need to know this? Who the fuck are these guys?

“Yes! What’s the fucking issue?” I’m kind of proud myself for how defiant I am.

There is a ripple of tension in the van. It’s moving again, circling around Silver Spring. They have a live one here. 

I’m starting to get the sense that these are office boys sent out from Fort Meade on an errand they are not entirely trained for. Even the NSA is straining for some clarity right now. 

One of the younger ones steps up from the back of the van. He looks like a former student of mine. Has his same demeanour. Polite and sad and earnest.

“I’m sorry sir we were sent out with some of the senior officers here to find certain people and ask them a series of specific questions.”

“And if I don’t comply?”

“Sir we have the jurisdiction to place you under arrest if you do not comply.”

“Whose jurisdiction?”

One of the other officers looms up from the back of the van. He looks more trained up. He’s the lawyerly one, yet with huge traps. He flashes me a badge of some potpourri of security agencies that I’ve never seen before. His body languages is as if it’s obvious that I should understand that this potpourri of agencies has the right to place me under arrest for not complying.

I do notice that this officer has a very high-powered looking rifle. So I decide to become a bit less testy.

“What does not complying mean?”

The younger officer looks at me again with those sad eyes. “Sir if you choose not to answer these questions that is considered to be noncompliance. We ask you to simply answer the questions.”

“Alright, I’ll answer them. How many more are there.”

“Two more, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir have you ever considered blowing up a pipeline?”

I want to say yes immediately, because that is my honest answer. The book was very convincing philosophically and strategically in a way which I think morally and spiritually sound. But I drop a moment of silence to parse out an answer that may not intensify the kidnapping situation.

“I found the arguments in the book ethically and spiritually convincing. But no, I have never been involved in any active planning of operations to attack fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Another drop of silence.

“I would commend anyone who attempts to do so.”

The younger agent kind of bristles. I am again surprised at my insouciance and my impatience. I never quite thought of myself as tending towards fight-or-flight when it comes down to it. I tend to emotionally turtle at any kind of turbulence. I think it was Iggy Pop who once said he always wanted to go to sleep when a fight happened. I can relate.

The lawyer agent opens the door abruptly.

“Alright that’s enough. You’re free to go. The Metro is a minute away. We didn’t go far.”

I step out. Easy enough, although my hands are now rather shaking. I start when the younger agent steps out behind me.

“Sir…” with great politeness so I know he’s not going to off me. But the best assassins are often the most polite ones. 

He hands me a pamphlet. “Sir, I think you might find this interesting. My name is Luther, by the way.”

I figure he already knows my name so why bother. He hops in the van and they speed off rather carelessly, very dramatic-like like on the shows. I catch my breath and my heart and I get the fuck in the Metro and back inside my apartment with locked doors as quickly as possible. What the fuck is going on?