"Kids in America"

“Mess with Michael Bay and you mess with America! I want you guys out of my country by tomorrow morning.”

“But this is Japan!”

“Every country in the world belongs to America!”

- Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged Series

==========

The Hoboken Days.

This was back a few years ago, back when Dick lived his boyhood in the Tri-State Area, dreaming of fellow native Frank Sinatra. If only I could croon, be a Rat Pack member, Dick often reflected, then perhaps my life would be a lot easier. But he couldn’t, his voice far too nasally during his middle school days, and the dim hours of late nights in front of the television, during the sessions at the virtual pool blocked off for Adult Swim, brought him across the sea, to the shores of Japan.

The tall and rather lanky Dick stood near the bottom of the social ladder of G. Gordon Liddy Middle School. He was nerd thin like a reed, had a nerd hobby like anime, and to top it all off, wore nerd-classic suspenders over a white shirt (“you’re such a handsome boy!” his loving mom would coo in the morning, while his lantern-jawed dad gave a nod of approval, corncob pipe in mouth, before disappearing behind the massive spread of the local newspaper). Well, better the suspenders than his thrift-shop High School DxD shirt, Dick supposed. But neither suspenders nor shirt would protect him from the daily morning ritual-

“Ahhhhh!” Dick squeaked out in first period, each and every morning, today no different, when star quarterback of the Liddy Plumbers football team, Chaddius Thundercock, yanked Dick’s tighty-whitey’s straight up his back, then over Dick’s scalp, hooking it around Dick’s forehead.

“Dick Slaughter?” Chaddius taunted. “More like Dick Loser!”

The class laughed and laughed. Dick finally managed to free himself from his own underwear. He shook a thin fist at Chaddius. “You’re…you’re only resorting to physical abuse because you can’t prove that I’m wrong!”

Unfortunately, quoting Armin wouldn’t help Dick here.

“But we weren’t arguing about anything,” Chaddius points out.

“...uh…anou-”

Someone tapped on Dick’s shoulder. He turned and was suddenly face to face with Brad Montgomery III, Plumbers All-American running back.

“Have a nice trip,” Brad said, pushing Dick backwards. Chaddius had slipped onto all fours behind Dick, and Dick now found himself tumbling downwards over him, sliding across the linoleum.

“See you next fall!” Chaddius concluded. Brad helped Chaddius to his feet, their work now done, leaving Dick to the class’s laughter.

“Can I borrow a zyn, bro?” Chaddius asked Brad on their way back to their desks, high-fiving.

BRILLIANT

BATTLE

FIRST CORINTHIANS

==========

EPISODE 3

“THE WHOLE-EPISODE FLASHBACK”

Dick rubbed his heinie with a frown. The class soon got bored of him and resumed their own discussions, the topic of which also gave Dick heart. Today would be the last in-person school day for the semester - the annual American measles outbreak had begun early this year, infecting enough for school shutdowns to begin, launching another period of online learning academy. School officials had told Dick’s parents that these online periods had definitely not affected his social skills.

But in any case, the class managed to settle down just a little when Mr. Malcolm entered for first period history. The state government only concerned itself with students’ math scores, so history was more or less a free study period. Not that Mr. Malcolm minded. He used to mind, back when he was young and fresh-faced, before the skiing accident got him on Oxycontin. He threw some history videos on the projector screen and then went back to observing his Polymarket bets. His class soon devolved into free-flowing discussions ranging from the Knicks’ title chances (Dick’s popularity was not helped by being the lone Nets fan in class) to the daily Wordle answer. Dick could only sit by himself and sigh. He would’ve stared out the window like any good anime protagonist, but he sat on the wrong side of the class!

And then the intercom began blaring an alarm.

“ACTIVE SHOOTER ALERT. ACTIVE SHOOTER ALERT. ACTIVE SHOOTER ALERT.”

Chaddius and Brad glanced at each other, uncertainty in their eyes. The class quieted down.

“Don’t worry kids,” Malcolm said, standing up. “There’s a lockdown drill scheduled for today, that’s it.” He then rubbed his chin. “Or, wait…maybe it was tomorrow…”

In any case, Malcolm ushered the students into action. He turned the lights off and locked the door. You see, the door had a window through which a shooter could look through; the theory was that the students would sit quietly along certain sections of the walls at just the right angle that would prevent the shooter from seeing anyone inside the classroom, making him think it was empty. This would (maybe?) have worked, except the plan was formulated before a recent round of budget cuts had dramatically upped the number of students in each classroom.

Dick sat at the edge of one such section, trying to hide his tall frame, but this left no space for Mr. Malcolm, who remained standing. Malcolm, who had a Hinge date that night, decided dying wasn’t in his best interest, and slightly nudged Dick over with his shoe, clearing a space for himself. This left Dick in view of the window within the door.

Of which a murky face now stared through.

Dick tried to sit still, as if he wasn’t there, but that only worked on dinosaurs (in movies, for that matter). The handle jiggled violently, as if trying to break through the lock. The class held its breath, even Chaddius, who nearly swallowed his knockoff Chinese nicotine pouch.

And then the door lurched open.

Of course, in hindsight, a locked door opening that quickly could only mean someone with a key. And that someone was the school police officer, Sergeant Spancer.

“You,” he said, pointing at Dick, jabbing out the door for him to follow.

A few minutes later, Dick sat across from the mahogany table of Principal Armstrong, a muscular man in a tight suit.

“Well, Richard van Dyke Slaughter,” Armstrong said, using Dick’s full government name, though not unkindly, “You’re here because you failed the lockdown drill.”

“You could’ve gotten your whole class killed,” Spancer barked. “Just like my platoon in Iraq, kid.”

Armstrong gave a disarming smile. “What my colleague means to say-”

“It was fall 2004,” Spancer began, eyes distant. “Me and the other Jarheads thought this would just be SSDD, how it usually was day-in and day-out during Gulf War 2, but the fighting in Fallujah surprised even the most veteran of us. My platoon got caught trying to cross an alleyway by an insurgent sniper. He shot Girthquake as he crossed. Got him right in the leg. Girthquake was crying out, begging for a corpsman, but anyone who tried to retrieve him would inevitably get shot by the sniper. So we waited, trying suppressing fire, but the sniper kept shooting, getting Mikey Two-Times as well, and when we refused to come out, he started shooting Girthquake elsewhere in his body, torturing him, and I stood amid the dust, wondering how I got here, but it was just the sight of those Towers falling man, it really got me, and somehow I was now halfway across the world, and nobody ever talks about how some men piss themselves in combat-”

Armstrong cleared his throat.

Spancer caught himself and trailed off.

“Like I said,” said Armstrong, “You failed the lockdown drill.”

“I didn’t really,” Dick squeaked. “I was in place, but Mr. Malcolm pushed me out of the way-”

“Mr. Malcom once won a state title for the Plumbers,” Armstrong recalled fondly. “I won’t have you speaking ill of him. But I understand lockdown drills can be rather difficult. I won’t punish you. All I ask is that you write a one-page essay tonight reflecting on what you can do differently in case this was a real shooting. Bonus points if you can work in a reference to McDonalds. They’re sponsoring this year’s Homecoming Dance.”

“McDonalds?”

“Ba-dum bum-bum-bummmm.”

The intensity of the measles outbreak resulted in the last full-day of in-person school being let out early. Dick trudged out of the school lobby, towards the waiting line of yellow school buses. In Japan, he’d be taking the train home right now, or walking along scenic riverbanks, thank you very much!

But Hoboken did have one thing Japan couldn’t offer him - his best friend. Or, outside of his younger sister, his only friend.

“Hey, Richard,” said Esther “Slide” Wisselstein, pale skin bordering on ghostly suggesting a nagging Tumblr addiction, a white band pushing back raven hair. As would later be evidenced by Shigeko, Dick had a soft spot in his heart for outcasts, and Slide ranked alongside him among the lowest tier of Liddy Middle popularity. Back in elementary school, during a Christmas period already made tough by lockdowns, the young students of America became obsessed with what appeared to be raw footage of Santa’s sleigh being shot down by the IDF while trying to deliver presents to the Gaza Strip. The viral video turned out to be an elaborate, artificially-generated hoax created in a Beirut basement by tech-savvy Hezbollah militants, but the damage had been done for Slide all the same.

“What’s wrong?” Slide asked as she and Dick slid into a seat on the school bus that would take them across Hoboken.

“I failed the lockdown drill.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Me neither. I’m assuming you passed then?”

“I didn’t have to do it. The teacher said that the Mossad would give me advance warning of any shootings, so I wouldn’t even be at school on that day.”

The bus wheeled through scenic Hoboken, much of the city a large grid with numbered streets going east-west, and the liquor stores were busy as people stocked up on provisions before the measles lockdowns began, commuters in their cars honking and screeching, distant train engines from Hoboken Terminal to the south. Dick imagined Japan would be a lot more peaceful.

Anime, the great escape; wabi-sabi streets free of litter, idle times across all four seasons. A dream land, a promised land, because anything had to be better than this third world country masquerading as a superpower, right? The New Jersey National Guard was already out, urban camo fatigues and assault rifles, setting up roadblocks and checkpoints, to prevent the protest-riots in Jersey City over the lockdowns from spreading…black helicopters flew low over the city, hovering over particularly rowdy bands of the unemployed, which had reached double digits just recently…

Senator-Governor Ryan Hadden, in snappy social media clips, urged for both calm and firm determination in order to beat “the other”, always undefined, always shifting. At first it was the “Bridge Club” establishment-machine that dominated New Jersey politics until Hadden reached the Governor’s Mansion. His call for a state-first agenda, a Jersey for the Jersey Boys/Girls, brought him a Senate seat as well, but Hadden simply decided to serve out the rest of his governor’s term at the same time. When Hadden was out of state in DC, the Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey, with apparent Bridge Club (or as later would be told, CCP) backing, declared himself the true Governor of New Jersey down in Trenton, resulting in the week-long “Bleedin’ Jersey” until Hadden-aligned tanks fired on Trenton City Hall, forcing a surrender.

Hadden, his national popularity rising by the minute as the face of law and order, argued a vast web of foreign digital interference allowed the Bridge Club/People’s Liberation Army to stage an insurrection, leading to close cooperation with the FCC’s Anti-Piracy Enforcement, which now flooded the state. Mass arrests swept across New Jersey, midnight knocks on the door, battering rams into apartment complexes, thousands guilty of illegal streaming, of which a good majority happened to be legislative opponents, loud online voices, or people at the wrong place and the wrong time, swept up by the dragnet, forced to explain why they just happened to be watching movies on sites hosted by illegal streamers operating out of Eastern Europe, which of course opened up the possibility that Russia had used these illegal streamers to interfere with American elections, subliminal messaging through semi-pornographic advertisements you clicked through while trying to watch something like Pitch Perfect, and therefore these voters, which happened to vote a certain way, must have cast misinformed, disinformed ballots, and therefore many New Jersey elected officials must be recalled, their elections illegitimate, replaced by Hadden appointees until Russia-free elections could be organized…

This would’ve been a good time for President Chet Recktall to intervene, but he had been recently occupied by an important issue known as a hemorrhagic stroke. That was the rumor, at least. There had been no word from the White House for some time, plans for his 95th birthday party cancelled, all statements now coming from his wife and personal physician, the Cabinet in disarray, and worst of all, this may affect his re-election chances next year…Recktall and Hadden were from the same party, but a primary challenge by Hadden looked increasingly possible, unless Recktall gave Hadden something, perhaps Treasury or State or even the increasingly-important position of Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC now possessing the fifth-largest army in the Americas, its mercenary force organized as an AmericaTV subsidiary, with most of its private military contractors now concentrated in protecting its new infrastructure projects in northern Mexico.

In Japan, they laughed while eating cake after school, and got money on New Year’s…

“You look deep in thought,” Slide told Dick.

Dick shrugged. “You ever wish you were anywhere but here?”

Slide studied the space between them, wishing she knew how to close it.

“Not always.”

Dick slowly nodded. His own answer was obvious. “It would be nice to move to Japan, yanno?”

Slide smiled. “Sure. But wouldn’t we have to get married first?”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Uh, you know…to make it easier to emigrate over there together.”

“I’d have to be single so I could marry a local. That’d be the easiest way to permanently move there.”

Shining red, Slide laughed awkwardly and rubbed her face.

“Fuck,” she kvetched under her breath.

“You’d really want to move to Japan?” Dick asked. “You don’t even like anime.”

“I do,” Slide protested, hands balled into tiny little fists. “I love Avatar, you know, Aang and Zuko and them…”