Assault Party

Dixie smiled blindly at the uniformed students before her. Despite the numbness of all of her untidy emotions, she had managed to succeed in one thing: her dream job. She was a professor of Pop Culture at UCLA, or UCBC, for Battery City. Of course, pop culture was banned everywhere but here. Here was where she taught future police and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W trainees how to recognize illegal movies, video games, television broadcasts, etc. Right now they were watching an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, She remembered vaguely when this used to be one of her favorite shows. When she came to think of it, what came up was an elusive hint of a person beside her on the couch that used to be hers, the house that used to be hers, watching this show. Oh, that was Jed, that little kid someone told her had been her brother.

Oh well, he was in a better place now, and she was too.

She ignored the fading of her pills’ effectiveness, vowing to take another in between classes. It was easy to get more; every pharmacy stocked them like they once had ibuprofen. Hospitals had turned into schools with a maternity section, and any treatment was unnecessary when everyone took their pills. The only thing people needed medically was pre-natal vitamins and their at-home stomach pump, complementary for bad days when citizens took too many pills. The cure to all ills was in small white capsules, engraved with the face of their salvation, the smile.

The episode rolled to a close and the television shut itself off with an electronic hum followed by the smile staring down at us, Dixie began her lecture:

“This is the most popular of pirated television shows at the moment, as anti-pill-takers are touched by the ‘emotion and witty banter’ shown by the writers and actors. Just watch out for Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz and you can catch a lot of perpetrators.” A hollow laughed etched itself across the room, “Boreanaz in particular has been featured in many, now illegal, series. First and foremost of them is FOX’s hit series, Bones, which has shown irrelevant gore and has therefore been placed on Better Living’s naughty list, in order to keep our citizens mental scars to a minimum.” She looked down at her plastic watch; it was time for class to be let out.

“It seems we’ve run out of time. I’ll see you next week and we’ll discuss the controversy of comic book illegalization, and what to look out for. Once you see what these things will do to anti-pills, you’ll never want to see one in your career. I’ve seen a man kill for an X-men, I swear,” the bell rang, “Remember to write your essay and hand it in to me before the semester ends, finals are getting closer, people!” Oh, was she getting old or what? The only training Dixie was given before this was teacher school and a few seminars, and now she had spent two years on the job?

Her crow’s feet must be terrible.

Stress had, in previous years, always hit her like a ton of bricks, but all the work she did now was just life, and she just existed, merrily doing its bidding. Her colleague passed by, a smile on his face, as he had just donated to the sperm bank; donating was like taking blood was years ago, a common thing to do at work once a year. She was even offered the chance to let them harvest eggs and freeze them, but she declined.

The repopulation groups that had taken over the city and filled halls with pregnant women had not affected Dixie, as she would not be given leave from her job, and as she had the right to refuse it. Of course, she only had the right to refuse impregnation because her pay grade was equal to a man’s. Also because she was given male status, as she was a teacher who frequently worked with the police. All other women with eggs left were fertilized and shipped to a clinic when the time came. Afterwards, the babies were taken, only to be seen again at the adoption auctions, or if the child was conceived by a couple, able to stay with the parents until schooling age, then taken away. The system worked well for child health and parent health. It also kept everyone working.

The smile was salvation, as mentioned previously. Salvation, she repeated that word in her mind until it became ingrained, because now she realized she would not have the time to go to the pharmacy, and she was out of pills.

Dixie’s hands began to shake, not remembering how being off of the pills would feel, not remembering pain or suffering, not wanting to feel hurt or broken. She was not going to look like an idiot in front of staff or students by asking one of them for pills; despite everyone’s calm, people were still vicious.

With a trembling hand she put on the movie for her advanced class. They were onto hard to recognize, but still illegal, movies, books, and magazines. This one was The Sound of Music. Musicals were allowed, but this one in particular was not allowed because it had Julie Andrews. The frequency of her near-perfect voice supposedly diminished the pills’ effects. Dixie did not wish this to happen to her, so she stepped out of the room, to her office balcony, hugging her arms to her rapidly beating chest. Now she was getting warm, as images of her stint in the desert pressed on her hippocampus, and she felt light headed. She took off her blazer, using the taut edge held between her hands as a fan of sorts. The professor slipped off her white pumps, letting her toes ventilate in the open air. Dixie put her forehead on the metal railing, letting the cool of it wash over her.

How she wished it would rain. Of course, the sky was controlled by BL/ind, so it was always a sunny day, to increase cheer. She just wanted to pour a bucket of water over her head, or into her brain, to flush out the dirty emotions. Dirty like the sand she had once bathed in for months, dirty like Jed’s blood on her hands. Dirty like leaving people to die, selfishly.

You should have stayed. A voice roared into her subconscious, steadily repeating. How did it get this bad this quick? It was only an hour into the goddamn movie, and she couldn’t even hear it out here. It was probably because she had spent so long without emotions.

Screw this, she needed a pill and now. Dixie threw on her shoes, straightening her white blouse, when another wave hit her. This one wasn’t violent, or dark and twisty, though, this was her eighteenth birthday party. She came home after school, wearing her gorgeous emerald cardigan, and there was vivid color and surprise as she opened the door to find her entire family congratulating her. She smiled and laughed, but it wasn’t a sardonic cheer manufactured by people she worked for, it was real. It was what Jed made her feel, what her friends made her feel, what playing a drum did to her heart beat.

This little ounce of prosperity that she just felt lifted her into the sky and out of the painful remission of the drugs from her system. She didn’t want any more pills; she didn’t want her laugh to sound like it came from a cave, like an echo. Dixie didn’t want to be an echo of herself, a shadow.

Pills weren’t going to help her. Life was, and this wasn’t living. She ripped off the pumps and tore back into her office, searching blindly for her Star Wars tee shirt, a hint of color in the dark. Ripping off her constricting pencil skirt once she found her way to her desk, she put on a worn pair of jeans. These street clothes were here for an emergency, and this was it. She grabbed the sneakers she had been running in for the past year, and laced them as quickly as possible. Dixie Knight pulled the tie out of her hair and was finally free.

This was real life, not the fantasy that she had been trapped in, not the dreamland that had caged her like a bird with a broken wing. She could fly now, and all of her shadows and echoes were dispelled to the wind. Dixie ran out of the college, smiling truly.

This was when it hit her.

She couldn’t stay.

She couldn’t keep living, pretending that she could fake everything that the pills did to people. She was lucid now.

She couldn’t keep pretending that she didn’t watch all of those movies in her desk drawers.

She couldn’t stay.

That was that. She ran home, finding the jeans more comforting than her tears. There was only one place she could go and that was the desert. Dixie thought she would never have to go back there, to being less than human, an animal hunting fellow animals, but that was more human than this existence.

Dixie hopped in her colorless eco-friendly car, wondering what had happened to her beloved Jewel, to the gun in her glove compartment, to the flute in her trunk. She drove home, dearly missing the feel of her stick shift, to pack supplies.

After that deed was done it was nightfall, and she thought of the best way to seek revenge on the company that had taken away her human right to feel emotion and think creatively. She’d take away their last surviving contraband. Everything in her office, all of the joy of the ages, she’d take it away. She’d find people who needed it and give it to them. Give back to the world.

She sprinted to her office, clutching the key and a cardboard box in her shaking hands. As she fumbled around getting the key into the appropriate orifice she heard voices inside.

“Get the goods and get out, no fooling around.” She peered into the small door window to find strangely dressed figures emptying her shelves of their contents. One of them opened her top desk drawer and she cursed under her breath.

“Oooo, lookie here!” One of them flaunted Dixie’s panties in the air, the people around him cheered quietly, with the exception of a little girl. She stomped her foot, smacking him in the head with Dixie’s favorite hardcover Angel comic.

“Would you do that if those were mine?” he nodded no, vigorously, “Then stop, this is some lady’s stuff we’re stealing, this could end her career.” Go, kid!

“Or her life,” another said darkly. Now she recognized these people. They were some of the survivors in the desert that had extermination orders on their heads. They were the heroes of the anti-pills.

My contraband is in good hands. She crept away to her car, leaving them to their heroics, a smile on her face at their bravery. As soon as she started the engine she was out of Battery City, in mind, though the worse was only to come.