Chapter 1: The Protest
{Silence Black}
Thursday, February 14th (St. Valentine’s Day), 2095
Bakersfield, CA
12:58 AM Pacific Standard Time

  I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day. Even when I was little.
  All the supposed ‘love’ going around…couples sucking face everywhere you turn. It’s fucking sickening.
  Maybe that’s why I chose that particular day for the Protest.
  It’s been three years with this damn chip in my brain. I’ve had enough.
  I glanced out the window at the weather. It was overcast outside, thunderclouds threatening to boom and start dropping rain at any second. They called February the cruelest month of the year. Any month being treated like a terrorist seems pretty cruel to me.
I laced up my black combat boots and tucked my jeans into them. I pulled on my red tank top that had the words FIGHT BACK stamped firmly onto it, and slipped on my black leather jacket. My illegal tattoos were hidden by the endless bracelets of leather and hemp I wore.
The dorm room was empty when I walked through it, the silence deafening.
  Silence. Sweet, sweet Silence…
  I shuddered. I was trying so hard to forget him…
  I checked out of the dormitories and walked to the parking garage where my Harley was parked. I stroked the machine’s beautiful leather seat and turned the key, basking in the sound of my baby’s purring. Lucille, I called her, after blues legend -from so many years ago- B.B. King’s Epiphone guitar.
Her name was emblazoned in the brightest silver on her blood-red side, just above her V-twin engine. I hopped on, tugged on my helmet and sped through traffic to the old abandoned Ford factory (established in 2065, closed in a recession five years later) where I had arranged for the Protest to be held.
The wind tousled my hair that flew free from the shiny black helmet, giving me the feeling of flight. I was sure this was what heaven would feel like. If I ever got there.
  Not that I would.
  Miniscule raindrops began to spatter on my visor, pumping me full of adrenaline and making my heartbeat speed up.
There was nothing like riding in the rain. I whooped and yelled and screamed as I sped down the busy highway, earning looks from the fools in their mammoth SUV’s, unaware of what was about to go down.
  I smiled my patented mischievous smile at everyone I drove past.
  I arrived at the factory a few minutes later, grinning from ear to ear at what I saw.
  Policeman were off to the sidelines waiting to jump in and interfere in case anything got out of hand; cameras and reporters from three different stations were chatting amongst themselves, already filming shots of the factory and the ever-growing crowd that was gathering here to hear me talk.
To hear me talk. I chuckled a little bit, and snuck to the giant hole in the wall at the front of the crowd where friends, volunteers and I had built a makeshift stage.
  This was crazy. Graffiti decorated the stage and wall around it in layers, our several different slogans written in numerous styles and languages. SPREAD THE STATIC was sloppily spray-painted in bright red on an old van that had been dragged to the side of the stage. A few misfits stood on top of it, throwing out t-shirts and bracelets, shouting and singing and making complete asses of themselves.
  It was beautiful.
  Eric, Ex-ray, and Smirt were perched on a fallen metal beam just above the stage, legs dangling above the scrap metal, smiling and waving at the crowd. My Three Musketeers. Though…there were several other names for them. Most of them obscene and…not good.
  I clawed my way through the crowd towards the stage, hearing the excited whispers of those around me, hearing several say things like, “Is that her? Is that Silence?” and “No, that can’t be her. I hear she’s taller.” I turned to the people who said those things and flashed them a bright smile.
  I leapt clumsily onto the stage forged from old metal scraps, my boot-clad feet making the metal cry out with a metallic voice.
  The Three jumped down from their precarious perch and landed simultaneously next to me as soon as I reached the center of the stage. They greeted me with a smile, and I gladly returned it. We were finally here. Finally…
  Ex-ray slammed me a high-five with his right hand and slapped my back. His real name was Xavier Ray. But that didn’t sound cool, now, did it? Smirt snickered and pointed at a girl standing atop the van flashing the cameras taking in the scene. I simply shook my head at him. Smirt. A self-proclaimed name like my own, composed of the words smart, dirt, smirk, and flirt, all rolled into one. It suited him well.
  Too bad you couldn’t fit stupid in there somewhere.
  Eric didn’t say or do anything; he simply continued to gaze at the mess of nonconformists that had gathered here to join the fight. He wore his classic outfit: jeans and black t-shirt bearing the words SPREAD THE STATIC, and his neon green Converse that were caked in mud and God knows what else. Around his slender neck dangled a set of dog tags back from when his dad fought in the devastating WWIII.  He had been shot dead by a drunken rogue soldier. I and the other two were the only ones who knew.
His blazing blue eyes surveyed the scene with a quiet amusement. A smile hid at the corner of his mouth as people began moshing in the center of the crowd. Music started blaring from a stereo somewhere to the side, the screaming music and wild guitar riffs, no doubt picked out by Ex-Ray, the music man of our motley crew. His eyes brightened when he heard the familiar song, and he mouthed the words as it grew louder and louder…
  Until it stopped abruptly, signaling it was time for me to speak. The reverberating quiet seemed to echo through the crowd, our audience growing quiet and still. It sent shivers down my spine.
  Smirt, our techno guy, handed me a microphone hooked up to a PA system he had built in less than fifteen minutes.
  I tapped it to test it, and nodded to him and he stepped back, smirking his smirk that we had all seen so much.
  “Hello,” I spoke calmly into the mike. “Welcome, my friends.”
  The crowd answered with a vociferous roar that shook the stage beneath me and made my ears ring. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric make a swift motion with his hands, and they fell silent again. It was amazing the way he controlled them. He’d done this before. Every person in this crowd knew he was my right-hand man and he meant business.
  “Thank you…all for coming out,” I continued. “In case you don’t know, and you’re coming out here for the first time, my name is Silence Black.”
  Cheers and shouts erupted from the crowd like boiling lava from a volcano.
  I grinned and nodded, “Thank you.” The ruckus subsided, “These” –I motioned to my comrades that stood to my left- “Are my…”
  “Henchmen,” Smirt offered, earning laughs from the crowd.
  I shook my head, “Well, kind of. But they’re my friends as well…” I stopped a moment, trying to remember my speech. “You all have shown up here for a reason, no doubt,” I stopped to smile my evil smile at the cops and reporters standing at the back of the blob of people. Several guys wolf-whistled at me, shouting, “Ooh, sexy.”
  This was fun.
  I went on, “You have come here because you are tired of being treated like a terrorist. You have come here to join in the fight to win back the privacy the Government so spitefully took away from us. Yes, secrets are bad. Yes, Mr. President, secrets tear us apart. But why punish us?” I stopped and let them cheer. Eric did his arm thing and they quieted down once more.
  I chuckled for effect, “Secrets. Why are They always whispering about secrets? They don’t even exist anymore. They have taken away our rights. Or they have tried to. The paltry few of us who still have thoughts and opinions of our own have come here today to voice those thoughts and opinions about the shit these miserable S.O.B.’s have put us through. They want us all to be alike. To be weird, monotone robots that all think alike. That all obey. That have no original thoughts in their heads. They want us to be like the Brats that reside in the Big City. The privileged who they have allowed to go to school. They want us all to be the same. So that it’ll be easier to control us.
  CAN THEY CONTROL US?” I shouted, making the PA screech.
  The crowd erupted once again. But his time, Eric just let them roar. Three news channels were getting this live. We were going to give them a show they would never forget.
  “That’s right!” I pumped a fist in the air and they all followed. “It is firmly written in the freaking Constitution that when a Government does unconstitutional things that we aren’t proud of or happy about, it is our God-given right to stand up and do something about it. And are we happy about having everything we do watched and critiqued?”
  “NO!” the throbbing mob answered.
  The voice I had heard so many times resounded in my head, “Citizens, stop your protesting and go home now.”
  At each protest, a Government helicopter showed up to tell us all to go home. The computerized voice that hacked into our PA said it several times, making jeers and swearing rise from the crowd angrily.
  “GO HOME!” the voice commanded again. A screech crackled and popped from the speakers.
  They were transferring the commands into everybody’s Chips. Whenever you broke the law or did something questionable, a recording was transmitted to your Chip, and that should have been the last time you did whatever you were doing.
  This was our third Protest just this month.
  I shouted at the man operating the copter, “We have the right to assemble as we want to! You can’t take away our rights!”
  The voice retorted, “Well, you’re right. We can’t take away your rights. Because you can’t take away something someone doesn’t have.”
  Screaming exploded from the audience.
  “LEAVE NOW OR WE WILL COME DOWN THERE AND ARREST YOU!”
  I turned to the people before me and yelled over the whirring of the helicopter blades, “Are you gonna take that?”
  “NO!”
  “Well, then come down here and GET US, buddy!”