Insane or Inspired? Book 2 (Part 8)

Phoenix

The fire alarm hadn’t gone off, which I thought was strange. The news stations had all suddenly switched to recorded footage of the school, which also seemed strange. And my phone was being inundated with text messages from various locations within the building, which wasn’t so strange, under the circumstances. That’s what everyone had been instructed to do, after all, in the event of an emergency. However, the content of the messages certainly was strange, and more than a little disturbing.

“What is it?” asked Tink, no doubt reading my expression.

I handed her my phone, so that she could see for herself. “The classroom is filling up with smoke,” she read out loud. “We tried to leave, but there are masked men everywhere, pushing us back inside. We told them that we couldn’t breath, but they don’t care. Help!”

“We’re being suicided,” said Jack.

“They’ll definitely blame the fire on us ,” I agreed. “But I don’t think the public will buy a suicide story. They’ll probably just say that we didn’t get out in time, and then make up their own narrative to explain everything.”

“Either way, we’re just as dead,” he remarked.

“No one’s dying on my watch,” I assured him.

“What are you going to do, Lucy, wave your magic wand?”

“I’m a girl. I don’t have a magic wand, even if I wanted to wave one.”

“You can wave mine, if you like.”

“Is it magical?” I asked him.

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

Tink interrupted us, by throwing a chair through the window.

“Jesus Christ!” said Jack. “What’s wrong with frickin’ door?”

“See for yourself,” she replied.

We both looked at the door, which had evidently been blocked with something from the outside, thereby turning the glass panel opaque. I tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open. “Jack, untie Mr Reece. We all need to get out of here, now!”

Once Tink had cleared the broken glass, I followed her through the window frame, onto the flat roof. However, it immediately collapsed under our weight, causing us to fall into the room below, which was already on fire. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

Instead of answering me, Tink drew my attention to the back of the room, where a number of our co-conspirators were laying, seemingly unconscious. “What were they even doing in here?” she said. “They had no reason to be in this room.”

“They were probably placed here,” I replied, as I scrambled over to them.

“Are they still alive?”

“I think they’ve been sedated.”

Tink tried to open the door. “We’re trapped,” she coughed, tugging at the handle.

I was also beginning to cough, at this point. I didn’t want to admit it, but our situation seemed grave. All either of us could do was scream, as loudly as we could, in the hope of being heard by somebody who wasn’t trying to kill us.

Nobody did hear us, however. At least, not according to the story that we were told, later on, in hospital. What apparently happened was that Jack and Mr Reece, seeing our predicament, proceeded to make their way to the ground floor, from the outside. They then broke the classroom door down dragged everyone to safety.

“What about the special ops guys?” I asked.

“What special ops guys?” said Jack.

“You know, the men who tried to seal us in.”

Jack gave me a hard stare, whilst gently shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. Still, I got the message, loud and clear: ‘Don’t mention the special ops guys’.

“She’s obviously confused,” he told the nurse.

Whilst I hadn’t been seriously burned, or injured, my sister was nevertheless on her way, apparently. “Do I have to stay here?” I asked, already eager to leave.

“We’d like to keep you in overnight, for observation,” said the nurse.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Jack waited until we were alone before briefing me on the situation. “We got lucky,” he said. “They completely bodged the operation. Nobody, in fact, was killed, and they’re now using a carrot and stick approach to ensure everyone’s silence.”

“What about the school?” I asked him.

“It was completely destroyed.”

“Good! How are the media spinning it?”

“They’re portraying us all as a bunch of anarchists and conspiracy theorists.”

“Do the police want to speak to me?”

“Put it this way, Lucy: Keep your mouth shut and you won’t have to worry about any repercussions.”

“So the carrot, in my case, is essentially just the absence of the stick?”

“What were you expecting, a cheque? I’d take the deal, if I were you.”

“Am I supposed to keep my mouth shut about everything, or just the government’s attempt to kill us?”

“Just the latter, I think.”

“Fine.”

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In a world as dark as ours, minorities of every type and description will inevitably be oppressed and abused by the majority. Democracy itself is a celebration of this principle, which has not gone unnoticed by those who value freedom. Benjamin Franklin himself said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”

His next words were: “Liberty is a well-armed lamb, contesting the vote.”

As I was thinking about this quote, from my hospital bed, I began to realise the awesome power that the minority actually possessed. Although, that power was usually perceived as being negative in nature. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?

“One rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel,” they say. This phrase is defined in the dictionary as meaning: “It only takes one person, thing, element, etc., to ruin the entire group, situation, project, etc. Similar phrases include, “a fly in the ointment,” and, “a turd in the punch bowl.”

And it’s true. Many aspects of our lives are affected or inconvenienced in some way by a relatively small number of people. However, we tend not to think about this, as it’s something that’s come to be accepted as being a normal part of everyday life. Security, for example, whether in terms of the locks on our doors, or the software on our computers, is only necessary because a tiny minority (significantly less than 1%), want to rob our homes or steal our data. Airport security, too, only exists because a ridiculously small number of people want to hijack planes, or plant bombs on board.

The truth is, despite the seeming advantage of the majority, it’s actually the minority — or, at least, the unlawful minority — who determine so much of our everyday lives. Even a single man, as history has demonstrated, can change the course of history, if he happens to be well armed and well positioned. Why, however, was the power of the minority so rarely used for good?

My thinking was beginning to take me in a radically new direction. For it was a numbers game, I realised, and one which could be used to our advantage. Every school in the country, after all, was attended by significant numbers of children. And it would only take one child, from each school, who recognised the evil that schooling represented, to bring the entire system to its knees.

To Be Continued