Chapter 2
California Prison State
Hector Chavez is Beast. He’s the leader of a group of five young Californians who have been longtime friends like their counterparts in NY. Hector is a computer beast because he grew up in the small Silicon Valley town of Davis, California. Silicon Valley is not part of the California prison state – it is a protectorate of the CSA. Kids in Silicon Valley grew up dreaming of becoming the new Steve Jobs, or even Zuckerberg. Hector was a coding genius and he could build his own computer from parts. But he still had to abide by the rules of the Rebellion which meant the Rebelband (R-band) offshoot of the web could only be used sparingly. He communicated in the games just like every young resistance person did.
Duran Estavez is Hector’s best friend but all five of these young members of the Rebellion went to public school together. When their school became a private theological academy, they were homeschooled with the help of materials provided by the Underground. They had no modern underground headquarters like the one in NYS. They met in hidden rooms behind the wine cellar at the Yang vineyards, rooms that were essentially SCIF’s, made invisible to Red State ‘prison guards’ by some very advanced computer skills, learned when many of the Underground Resistance were employed by Apple or Google. Duran’s screen name is Condor.
Joe and China Yang, brother and sister, more friends from public school days and from sports activities, were members of this young resistance ‘cell’. Their family had been in California for many years, even, perhaps, more than a century. Joe called himself Chink on the internet. As a brother-sister pair they were very close, only a year apart in age. They worked in the family business daily now that they were done with formal schooling. China Yang was studying medicine in the Underground University – a long process since the Underground had to lay low at times. The medicine she was learning was strong on facts and anatomy, short on practice with modern medical technology. Screen name – Doc227
Joanna Harvey, the last member of this group, reads as white-suburban-middle-class as anyone you could find in a prison state. She could easily pass for any Red Stator, but she would certainly have to keep her passion for equal rights hidden. She was hoping to be sent in as a scout. In any operation she could be a ‘surface dweller’ because she fit in demographically, but her Californian mannerisms and accent needed work. She had a very good, very fake Apple employee ID that might explain her habitual California girl persona. Joanna was a dancer, but most of all she was a painter and a good one. She knew her way around computers and especially knew the graphics programs where others might not excel. Once a woman in the CSA married and had a child, she was no longer welcome in a career. Joanna, as a young single, could apply for jobs and expect to be hired. She could also expect a lot of perhaps unwelcome attentions from men in the workplace since the CSA was a male dominated society. And she had better not get pregnant because abortion was a criminal offense. Screen name – Picasso101
California is never buried in snow and the Yang family owns a vineyard which supplies wine to elite members of the CSA, funneling some money back into the business, helping Davis families survive, and contributing to the privately managed investment account belonging to clandestine members of the BSA. No puffy coats here, not quite such a survivalist vibe, but it is more difficult to hide what you are doing when it is always so easy to get around.
People need a valid reason to go into a SCIF, even if the building is not labeled as such. The building itself must be bigger than the safe room and it must have a purpose so that it is expected that residents will go there. The other SCIF in Davis is disguised as an arts center. Residents can join a band there, or a dance group, or take art classes, or just work in any of the studios. The entrance to the SCIF is hidden away and you need a code to enter this room which is where the computers are kept and where you can go to take classes from the Underground University. Some of the SCIF premises, as mentioned before, are actually underground behind the wine cellar at the Yang vineyard.
When Chavez (Beast) got the message at the same time that NY did, the other four members of his group were not in the game. Before he left the “Pit” as this computer node was affectionately known, he left a message for the others. ‘Polo missing,’ it said. Joanna wandered in from an art class at the art center and saw the message. She also saw that there had been no other messages after the TO, but she checked into the game with NY anyway and played along in case they were being surveilled. ‘It’s very hard to learn to keep all your activism a secret, to mention it to no one, to not often even get a chance to have a conversation that wasn’t coded with her closest friends,’ Joanna mused after she died for the third time and the screen said game over. The screen invited her to play again and she said yes. ‘What could have happened out there in the CSA?’ she thought as she twisted a long strand of perfectly straight blonde hair.
She noticed it was almost 4:30. She had to go home to help with dinner. Picasso101 AFK she typed, swished that long blonde hair over her shoulder and exited the Pit.
But she would have a hard time waiting until she would be able to go back online again to hear about any updates.