The Beginning

Harrison Meritte

T - 15 minutes

Pacifica Academy, Free Speech Square

Free speech has never reached a higher epitome in Pacifica Academy than right now. Hundreds of student protestors gathered.

Each time they waved their banners, the earth bathed in shadows. Each time they pumped their fist, the leaves fell from the gust. Each time they roared their slogan, the mountains trembled back their words of morality.

People say a protest was a fire, that it would burn itself out. However, this group was a growing wildfire, swallowing all passersby into the fumes of righteousness.

A fire hungered for fuel and air, and a protest starved for raw emotion.

On the stage stood the leader of the protest. Her words shook the air and shook the students' hearts. She spoke with confidence, with eloquence, with audacity. Her case stood upon a irrefutable foundation, with reason solid as steel beams, yet amidst the iron frame she sowed blossoms of colorful, blooming emotions.

Every student who walked by, no matter their age or belief, stopped to listen. While the essence that captured their soul may differ, the result was the same. They followed her words as if hypnotized.

The speaker on the stage was Teresa Paloma, the president of the Pacifica Student Council, the leader of this protest.

On the rooftop across Teresa, with a bird eye view to the entire protest, stood the smartest man in Pacifica, Harrison Meritte.

***

Armed with a chocolate smoothie, Harrison Meritte stood in the shade of the canteen rooftop, enjoying both his dessert and the view of the protests. It was probably another one of those, about teacher pay or financial aids. He considered walking a hundred meters to find out himself, but it wasn't worth giving up the refuge from the burning sun.

He took a slurp from his smoothie. Wonderful as usual. Pacifica Academy's chocolate smoothie, like its every other thing, was always the finest in the nation. The cocoa beans were shipped from the nation's warmest equatorial farms, the water from the nation's purest northern glaciers, the sugar from the nation's richest coastal plantations. Even the smoothie blender had been fabricated by the finest machines in the central industrial districts.

The chants of the protestors reverberated around the perimeter, but Harrison didn't catch what they were saying, or couldn't be bothered to. He was immersed in his calculations. To ship the water from the glaciers, that would take five hours by plane. To get to the coastal plantations, they would need to cross four time zones. It would be even longer for the equatorial farms. Their ships needed to cross the Atlantic Ocean!

Harrison's thoughts were broken by a staccato of footsteps drawing closer, urgent yet poised. Without turning his head, Harrison knew it was Teresa Paloma, the leader of the protest.

"Appreciate you checking up on me here, Teresa," Harrison smiled without turning his head.

"Nah, you just happened to be in between me and lunch," Teresa bantered back lightheartedly.

"Ah, so you climbed to the rooftop just to get around the obstacle."

"Shut up, Harrison."

Harrison turned back. Teresa was obviously exhausted from speaking all these hours under the sun. She too, had a smoothie in her hand. Sweet tooth wasn't the only thing she infected him with.

"So what's the rally about this time?"

"It's about giving students more autonomy over their moral formation."

"Oh?" Harrison raised his eyebrows. This was interesting. "And why is that?"

"Well, for a group of students supposedly raised to become the future leaders, isn't it ironic how they indoctrinated us with the same belief system? I know they never said it, but look at what they taught us in the classes, and all those Counselors digging into our lives, doesn't it become obvious?"

"That's true…" Harrison was about to say something but stopped himself. Over the years spent with Teresa, he learned to not voice his analysis unless she asked to hear it. However, Teresa already got the cue, and over the years, she learned to listen to his input without taking it personal.

"I know, I know, you don't have faith in the general student populace." Teresa took a sip from the smoothie. "You think they are gonna screw up."

"Exactly," said Harrison. Not just the students, every fallible person in this damn society, he wanted to say. But if anybody overheard him, he could be reported to the Counselors. So he kept his mouth shut.

"Look, I trust the students. Their capability may be lacking, but their intention would be pure."

Harrison nodded without speaking. Teresa's belief in the public was a product of pure faith, and Harrison had no heart to attack it. It was truly remarkable that, even after going through what she had had to face, Teresa still believed in the good in people. Harrison had never been able to do the same. Every time he thought about his grandfather, all that remained in him was trembling rage. The cold court room. The twelve crooked faces. The ostentatiously empty words. The disgusting look of satisfaction on everyone's faces after the service of so-called "justice".

Harrison felt the anger swelling up in his stomach again, so he quickly covered it up with a face of cynical nonchalance. He had gotten really good at it.

But Teresa was quick to pick up his hesitation. Unlike the other Pacifica students, who were quick to condemn any hostility, Teresa knew enough of Harrison's history and understood enough of his emotions to refrain from judgement.

"You have doubts on their morals," said Teresa. "I understand…"

"Yeah, and I know you don't. I guess we are always gonna have different views about this," said Harrison, adding a few chuckles to lighten the mood. He didn't want this conversation to spiral into another fight, or worse, another mutually confiding session filled with grief and sympathy.

But from time to time, under the rare circumstances when Harrison got in touch with human emotions, regrets would cross in his mind. Now was such a moment. It was a pity, that the girl standing in front of him, who knew everything about him, had now drifted afar. Harrison tried to grasp the exact thing that bothered him. It wasn't Teresa's absence. It was the restraint they both had to display in her presence.

However, in the next few moments, the emotion grew a little too big for Harrison's tolerance of sentimentality. Once the feelings evolved into a form too complex to be defined by words, Harrison would prefer to stash them away.

"It's a little ironic that you're against this though," Teresa said, pulling Harrison back to the present. "The freedom of moral formation that we are advocating for, it means less ethics class and less Counseling sessions. You hate the Counselors."

"Well, Counselors versus mob rule, gotta choose the lesser of the two evils," Harrison said sarcastically with a smirk. But it was true. He despised the Counselors. "I'm still surprised you aren't fed up with the bullshit. Counselors love us conditionally? Counselors accept all our moral depravity? I can't be the only one who finds this absurd."

"Well, to each their own."

Harrison knew that Teresa and many others didn't share his opinion towards the Counselors. He had to admit, the Counselors did help the students. They helped many, including Teresa, through the dark periods of their lives. They even gave love to those who craved it but felt unworthy for it. But at what cost?

Harrison couldn't remember the exact moment he started to hate the Counseling sessions. But every single week, he would be forced into that office. The artificially bright room, the transparent desk, the plastic greenery, and worst of all, the sharp, prying eyes of his Counselor. His Counselor would begin some small talk, but Harrison knew that every word he spoke would be assessed, and even every twitch of muscle would be scrutinized. Should his pupils dilate at the wrong moment or his cadence falter slightly, his Counselor would immediately dig deeper into his thoughts, eventually bringing out all the specks of moral imperfection that he could find.

Of course, Counselors loved all students unconditionally. Counselors accepted all moral depravity. Harrison never got punished, explicitly. But the ensuing hours of moral correction was enough of a torture in itself.

Yeah. Perhaps Counselors could give students love. But so what? While love was something nice to have, it would be pathetic to give up freedom of thought for it.

"So, about the protest. Any opinions on what I should do?" Teresa asked, trying to change the subject. While Teresa and Harrison didn't see eye to eye in some things — both in the public sphere and the more personal sphere — she knew that she could never have come so far without his advice.

"Well, how much progress are you making?" Harrison asked.

"We have been handing out flyers and hosting rallies. There will be one more next week."

"That sounds nice. More students will hear about this."

"You can just be blunt with me, Harrison. What's your honest opinion?"

"Well, if you want the honest opinion. All these sound like action, but not progress. Progress comes when real change is made, and you and I both know that it does absolutely nothing. The school lets you shout some slogans, and they pretend to listen. Nothing gets done."

"Perhaps the progress is small, but protest is the legitimate way to do it, unlike the methods you had recommended me." Teresa lowered her voice a bit, for illegitimacy implied immorality, and things would get complicated if words of immorality were to get overheard by school faculty, or worse, if such thoughts were to get observed by the Counselors.

"Okay. I admit. My methods are a little more gray area. But it would work. Dividing the faculty and digging up their dirt are the best ways to exert leverages against the school's rule makers. If you truly believe that your cause is moral, the methods are justified, at least to a certain extent," said Harrison, slowly and cautiously. "Besides, you won't actually carry through and hurt them. All the things you gathered, it's only for creating an impression of insecurity."

Harrison phrased his sentences carefully. To be more precise, he sculpted his thoughts carefully. Not many Pacifica students are intelligent enough to breed daring ideas like this in the crevices of their thoughts. Fewer could do so without displaying anything odd in their Counseling session.

"It's not about my personal ambition for success, it's about the legitimacy of this entire movement. If people find out we are using illegitimate means, then they will attack the morality behind everything we built, whether the cause was reasonable or not."

"Valid concern. But have you succeeded? Have you even built anything yet?"

Teresa paused and turned to Harrison. "You see, that is why I wish you could have joined me in these student rights movements. The brain of Harrison Meritte could have added a lot to our plans."

"You know that I am not as attached to these affairs as you. I don't want to join an organization who tries to fight for the good when they can't even have an internal consensus upon the definition of good."

Teresa would have gotten annoyed. Two years ago she had been indeed. However, every time Harrison gave this same reason, Teresa could never refute it.

Suddenly, Harrison's gaze broke away. Behind Teresa, there was a flurry of movement that caught his eye.

"Let's get out of here," Harrison grabbed Teresa's arm and started towards the opposite direction.

"Wait what?"

"Look at the protestors, just trust me on this."

Harrison had no time to explain. But it was the protestors. They weren't running, but they were shifting and turning their heads towards different directions, trying to look at something faraway. From the height of the rooftop, Harrison could see birds flying away in flocks near the campus gate. The clearing around the gates were unusually empty. This was an abnormal combination of silence and chaos.

"Look, I gotta be with them if they are in trouble. It's my —"

Gunshots. A few clear, staccato bursts.

"RUN!"

Screams erupted amidst the blaring sirens and flashing lights. Everyone bolted for the door, but in an orderly fashion of course, because no Pacifica student would be so selfish as to create a stampede.

Teresa looked towards the panicking protestors. She bit her lips, then followed Harrison.

As I told you many times, Pacifica students are the most brilliant in our society. They have drilled emergency lockdowns for so many times that they could walk to the lockdown rooms with eyes closed. Students hurried away in groups, some physically supported by others.

Swiftly and steadily they exited the canteen, with the false hope that all they needed to do was stay calm for a few hours, and they would soon be rescued.