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GWOT Vision of Peace


I tried to check every post as often as I could. For the perimeter posts, that meant once a shift or twice a day. Gates more often. Other posts I had to entrust to the supervisors - but any place we put a guard, I needed to check on occasionally.

The infirmary post was one I checked more often than most. The guard had to be polite, as trained in medical skills as we could manage, courteous, skilled at searching people, show some level of empathy to the hurt, sick, ill and dying as needed ... and utterly willing to kill instantly should that become necessary. They had developed their own procedures, under supervision, and some touched every part of the infirmary. The infirmary guard verified the pharmacy tech's log book twice a shift. The infirmary guard's metal detector wand had been unexpectedly vital during surgeries, minor and otherwise, for finding metal fragments. The infirmary guard double checked the receptionist's patient care log. And -- the infirmary guard was the link to Security Control, to advise the infirmary to get ready before the casualties started flooding through the doors.

The trash yard guard also had a wand and body searched people hands-on, but at that point similarities ended. Politeness took a back seat to watchfulness, and courtesy to assertion. Employees were guests in the trash yard; prisoners were exactly that, prisoners, and the protocols that forbade them to speak directly to employees were ruthlessly implemented by immediate corrective force. This was an unarmed post, no firearms in the yard, but might require instant and vigorous use of the baton.

The dormitory guard had the biggest challenge in terms of customer service. Dormitory staff were in charge of the dorms; but the dorm guard controlled access, patrolled, participated in searches (consent and otherwise), and enforced fire safety regulations with a fervor bordering on religious fanaticism. Too many lives in question to do anything else.

Today I was checking on the guard assigned to the Children's Area. This post was a partial - staffed between 0600 and 1000 - by which time any children who had not gone to school had returned from sick call and been put back to bed - and then again between 1700 and 2100, just an hour before Lights Out. On weekends there were enough employee parents around that guards were on call if needed, not assigned.

I inspected the log. The Count - the number of people for which this area was responsible - remained static at 174. Only authorized persons and parents of children were permitted access, and even then under specified rules with logs kept. Even my visit was logged, and properly so.

The guard was completely unarmed except for four zip ties in a sewn sheath, left in the desk drawer between shifts, and a powerful rechargeable flashlight on its wall charger mount - just in case an evacuation was ever necessary. I checked through the disaster bag at the post: hard hat, vest, leather gloves, clipboard, paper, pens, spare forms. This was not a search post so no wand was necessary. No radio either - one would be useful, but we didn't have nearly enough of them, and there was an internal VOIP phone right there on the desk with two more within easy sight.

I ran through scenarios with the guard on duty. Unauthorized attempt at access. Ill child. Elopement. Attempted abduction - which under the No Hostage Policy, would become a React incident where React would enter the room shooting. Fight between children. Staff allegation of misconduct. Domestic dispute between parents.

She knew her business. But she wanted to make her feelings plain on one point.

"I will not, ever, for you or anyone else, carry or use a weapon."

I was OK with that, because it had been disclosed up front. That severely limited the usefulness we could make of her, but that was OK as well. She would never attempt the Kill House, but her performance in both verbal judo and hand to hand was excellent.

I had a few words with the manager of the Children's Area, who had nothing but praise for all three of the guards who worked the Area.

On the way out, I stopped for a moment, just beyond the double doors with their signage "CHILDREN'S AREA."

I knew the price we paid to keep this bubble of normalcy going in the midst of madness. Some of these children had seen horrible things during the rescue convoys. Not a few had done them. Also not a few had had horrible things done _to_ them, and there was some overlap with the doers as well in that group.

No more of that. We would do the horrible things so that these children would live to grow up.

I reviewed again in my mind the site evacuation plan that had been proposed from Corporate. Eight hundred Employees board buses. Their spouses and children to ... follow? Squeeze in tightly at a ratio of 2.3 to 1? Hike?

Then all the Employees unworthy of priority evacuation, because replacements for them could be hired elsewhere. That was by definition true of nearly all the Contractors as well -- I mean, that's what we are. The hired help, interchangeable.

The one place we hadn't made distinction of class in our brave corporate fascism was here in the Children's Area. The children of valued Employees played and studied next to the children of landscapers and cooks.

And there was no evacuation plan for them. None whatsoever.

Not for the first time, I thought about the convoy I would need to get just the children out. It totaled up to three hundred seats or more, with only three vehicles in our motor pool capable of carrying more than seven passengers.

I'd had to give the County transit bus back, too. In addition to details like GPS tracking, they needed it - to help move evacuees and detainees out to camps in the Central Valley.

That was the worst part. There was no particular distinction being made between an evacuee, homeless merely because their homes had been nuked, and a detainee - often enough, for felony riot, looting and murder.

Put children into that mass of seething humanity?

Not on my fucking watch.

We needed more vehicles. The Bay Area was not a place we could get them.

Off to the salt mines. Time to send more E-mails.

Apocalypse. With E-mails.

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