# # # # # # # #
Zzyk finally responded to the humiliating reality that the Wilizy now owned and occupied Albertan land, but in a way that nobody had anticipated. He made no attempt to harass the volunteers working on the gardens or prevent the bartering. Instead, he set up IOF checkpoints on Alberta's borders with the Aboriginal Nation and Saskatchewan. Any Saskatchewan, B.C. or A.N. visitor entering or leaving Alberta had to land at these little garrisons of DPS soldiers and state the purpose of their visit. Any copter entering or leaving Alberta in any other manner would be shot down. Any visitors admitted into Alberta had to follow these regulations.
Only air traffic from A.N., B.C., and Saskatchewan is allowed into Alberta and only if the air vehicle lands at the border post for inspection and approval. On entry into Alberta, IOF custom agents will search the vehicle for illegal goods and will record the names of pilots and passengers. The agents will attach a transponder that will enable the pilot to fly without challenge anywhere within Alberta. Attempts to remove or disable the transponder will bring a military response. On exit from Alberta, the vehicle must land at a border post where customs agents will search the vehicle and will remove the transponder. A single instance of the vehicle being used to smuggle Albertans out of the IOF will result in the destruction of the vehicle and the imprisonment of the pilot.
Wilizy vehicles and vehicles that the Wilizy lease are allowed in and out of the province without inspection and without having to land at the border posts under two conditions. First, all Wilizy vehicles must carry green and white colours. Second, the Wilizy leadership must provide a written guarantee that their vehicles will not be used to smuggle IOF citizens out of the province. For their own safety, Wilizy vehicles will be required to carry transponders that will identify them to DPS forces. To facilitate their quick entry and exit from anywhere in the province, Wilizy vehicles are not required to return their transponders on leaving the province.
Hank's intuition that Rick was the driving force behind the new openness of the borders was accurate. His intuition that Zzyk was behind the insistence on transponders was also accurate. From now on, the DPS would collect data on all of the Wilizy's vehicles that crossed the borders. Curiously, no forms had to be filled out that revealed what they were carrying. However, the DPS would know the number of flights into and out of the province, as well as the originating and final destinations. But, this seemed innocent enough; after all, they could get that information simply by following their copters around. Were they running short of military copters that could trail them? Hank would ask Wolf about that.
# # # # # # # #
On the other side of the Atlantic, Mac had flown her newly purchased long-range solar copter from St. John's, Newfoundland to Glasgow, Scotland and then to Edinburgh where she played tourist for a day. From there, she made her way to a little village north of Perth named Meigle and laid a flower on a grave. The markings on the very old gravestone were legible enough to read the name John Wighton. The dates were long gone.
Mac made her way down the eastern coasts of Scotland and England slowly and carefully. She flew only in the early morning and that was mostly over open water. As the countryside started to wake up, she'd come ashore in a desolate area, hide the copter, and conduct a discrete surveillance of the area. If a town were nearby, she'd walk into it, browse through some shops, sit in the pub for hours nursing a single pint, and listen to the conversation around her.
As expected, she learned that townspeople recognized her accent as different, but they didn't pay much attention to it. There were lots of different accents. However, her clothes branded her as a foreigner much more so than her voice. Mac bought a large suitcase and filled it with appropriate clothes, shoes, and accessories that would show her to be a country girl, but not a foreigner.
The large suitcase joined two bulging backpacks in the copter. One held her army clothing. The second bag held weapons and a cluster of various surveillance instruments, ammunition, and assorted military gear that she had cached years ago when she had left Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for Surrey, B.C.
By the time Mac reached London, she had a mild Scottish accent and an ample amount of English currency from the sale of her long-range copter. She had found that sale difficult to complete. It meant that she couldn't return to the Aboriginal Nation if she changed her mind.
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Chapter 3
From Will's journals: Friday, April 20, 2083.
It was mid-April and TG and I were still in England. Our inquiry into the world of genetics was proceeding slowly and, I have to admit, with some frustration for both of us. The Oxford professor, a nice man in a social setting, was an insufferable bore in the classroom. He was very knowledgeable in his field and it was for that reason that I had sought him out. But the good professor, in his desire to educate TG and me in the finer points of his subject, spared no efforts. Whenever we learned something, both TG and I would normally get from A to B by going...from A to B. However, the professor would get from A to B by starting at A and then working his way backwards from Z in random non-connected jumps until eventually, and I really mean eventually, he arrived at B. The words of Shakespeare were always intoned at least once a day even though the bard had nothing to say about genetics – the subject not being known in Shakespeare's era. I recalled how Shakespeare had written: Brevity is the soul of wit. When I was trying to prevent myself from falling asleep in his classroom, I frequently wished that the good professor was wittier.
On this Friday night, the good professor had invited us to his favorite pub to have a pint. Initially, I had been reluctant and told TG that I couldn't go because Izzy was not in favour of drinking. That was because the dissident men that she had lived with would get drunk nightly and would invariably beat on a child or a wife. TG looked at me like I was barmy. This was the English way of saying that I was weird and he asked, "Isn't accepting an invitation to go to a pub a decision that you could make on your own?"
So I thought about it and decided that I wanted to see what a pub was like after all. The professor ordered a warm beer, and TG said that he'd have one to find out what it was like. I said that I would too, but TG suggested that I might prefer something called a Virgin Mary instead. So I ordered one. It was quite tasty. Spicy and with a strong taste of tomato juice. I couldn't taste the alcohol at all. When I mentioned this to TG, he said that was because the drink didn't have any alcohol in it. So of course, I had to ask him why I would come to a pub and not have a drink with alcohol in it. For that answer, TG asked the professor to explain.
It turns out that certain races of people are vulnerable to even slight amounts of alcohol in their systems. For them, sipping alcohol is like guzzling a fast-acting poison. Aboriginal people in North America can be vulnerable, according to the professor. I said that I wasn't aboriginal, but was Albertan. He replied that certain Asian races shared the intolerance and it was quite likely that Ingrid's genetic model had borrowed heavily from some Asian races. I told them how I had seen some drunks in Albertan cities, and how there was an underground market in certain brain-band chemicals that were distributed widely even though the DPS supposedly tried to stop it. TG said that he had heard snippets of conversation when he was working for the DPS that revealed that the DPS weren't trying to stop it, but were actually promoting it.
"I bet Ingrid built an alcohol intolerance gene into her genetic model," TG said. "Albertans who became frustrated with the IOF would turn to alcohol or chemicals and that would make them very visible, very quickly to the DPS. After that, they'd disappear without a trace."
"That would be a great way of identifying potential rebels before they could rebel," the professor said. "But you don't know that for sure. Why don't you prove it? Find the gene."
That's when the class became interesting. TG and I spent about a week poring through the genetic make up of Albertans. In other aspects to their genetic makeup, they were bred to be healthy and hardwo
rking. They were also bred to react to alcohol and certain other chemicals. Of course when we were in the pub that night, we didn't know that yet.
After the professor had left for home, TG and I were roughing out how we'd work through the data to find the alcohol gene. I guess I got stuck into thinking about another type of study, and I came back to life in the pub only after TG had clamped his hand over my nostrils.
"What?" he asked. "What were you thinking about?" he repeated when I didn't answer. I'm always a little fuzzy headed after I've been deprived of oxygen.
"I was thinking that I could be a test subject in a study of the effect of alcohol on an Albertan citizen," I said. "Besides, I'd like to know what alcohol tastes like."
I was keen to conduct the study right then in the pub, but TG said that I was too big for him to carry, which didn't make any sense to me. Instead, he bought two bottles of beer and we took them back to our boarding house for me to try. It turns out that the best place in a boarding house to sample beers is sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom. TG assured me that even though the tub was very uncomfortable to sit on, I'd appreciate its location soon enough.
I woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache. I found myself on my bed, with my shoes off, but otherwise still in my clothes. TG heard me moaning, came in, saw me awake, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the bathroom. "This is what came up out of your stomach," he said and pointed to the toilet bowl. "I saved it for you in case you wanted to document the results of your study." It turned out that I didn't really want to do that after all.
Later that day, I had recovered enough to ask him how much I had had to drink. I was expecting him to say that he had been forced to go back to the pub to bring back more bottles. "Half a bottle," he said. "At most."
# # # # # # # #
TG and I would go back to that same pub every Friday night from then on. The food was good, and I found that sitting around and not thinking about genetics was relaxing. TG would inevitably open up a discussion with somebody at a nearby table and we'd be invited to join them. I'd order only Virgin Mary drinks, and TG would nurse his one vodka and tonic for the entire evening. I asked him why he only had one drink the whole night and he admitted that the people of his race had an intolerance to vodka. Besides, he didn't come to the pub for the drink.
"Why come, then?" I had asked.
"For the company," he said. "You. The people that we meet. I often find life to be very boring. But studying people is always interesting. It's very challenging to try and understand people."
"Like who."
"Like the good professor, for example. Do you know his last name?"
"No. He seemed reluctant to share it. Do you?"
"Yah. I asked him because he seemed reluctant to share it. It's Ramsbottom. Professor Edward Ramsbottom."
"Brits are a little strange with their surnames. They seem to have an affection for animals and animal parts. Our landlady's surname is Hogshead."
"In Britain's very early history, they used to name some people after their occupation. The surname Taylor came from a person who sewed clothes. Smith came from a person who worked a forge, like a blacksmith. I wonder what the good professor's ancestors had as a job that would earn them the name Ramsbottom."
"Something that required them to look at a ram's bottom?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps an ancestor had a face like a ram's bottom. Do you think that the good professor's last name is the reason why he talks forever and ever?"
"Do you?"
"I wonder why he feels the need to fill empty space with his voice. It's interesting to speculate. The couple we were with tonight. Why did the wife insist on telling her husband what he could drink and what he couldn't drink? She reminded me of Izzy."
"Wolf believes that Izzy bosses me around too much."
"She does boss you around," TG agreed. "Do you enjoy her doing that?"
"No. But I'm a slow thinker. By the time that I realize what has happened and I decide to say something about it, she may not even be in the same room."
"Nothing stopping you from re-opening the conversation."
"I suppose. She's trying to be less bossy."
"And how's that been going? Whose decision was it for the two of you to make a personal appearance during which Franklin captured both of you?"
"Izzy's decision. She didn't ask me. I would have said No. The issues with the slings and weapons were obvious."
"Lucky thing for everybody that Franklin was an old fool."
# # # # # # # #
The topic of Izzy came up again on our last pub night. We were talking about Yollie and Izzy and how they had become such good friends. TG asked me, "Do you ever see Izzy bossing Yollie around when we're not in a battle?"
"That would never happen," I snorted and quickly regretted it. Having tomato juice inside a nostril is not a pleasant experience.
"Why not?"
"Yollie would never put up with it," I said.
"Does that mean anything to you?"
I didn't see what he was driving at.
"We agree that Izzy is a bossy person. She takes charge."
"Yah."
"And you agree, outside of a battle, that she's not too bossy with Yollie, or me, or Wolf, or Mac when she was with us, or Yolanda, or Hank..."
"Yah."
"So, Izzy doesn't have trouble controlling her bossiness when she's around them."
"They're not her boyfriend."
"So, being her boyfriend means that she bosses you around a lot and you can't do anything about it?"
"Pretty much."
"If that were the case, Yollie would have to put up with it too because she's Izzy's girlfriend. But, Yollie doesn't have to put up with it because it doesn't happen."
I didn't have anything to say. I got bossed and Yollie didn't.
"Will, perhaps you're bossed around a lot because you let Izzy boss you around. You don't show her or tell her in any way that you don't like it. Perhaps you should tell her that you don't like her bossing you around."
"But she's my girlfriend and we're going to get married. I love her. I can't tell her that I don't like her bossiness. That would mean that I didn't love her."
TG had to stop and think about that. I put a napkin up to my nose because I was pretty sure I was leaking tomato juice.
"Being in love doesn't mean that you can't be annoyed with each other, Will. Every couple has imperfections. When one person does something that bugs the other, they work it out. They change a little bit so it's not an annoyance any longer. All I'm suggesting is that you could be more assertive when Izzy bosses you around. Tell her when you don't like it. Stand up for yourself. Help Izzy see where the limits are."
I didn't see TG's suggestion working. Sure, we had imperfections. Izzy put up with mine. So, I had to put up with hers. If we argued about these kinds of things, we wouldn't be in love. I'd rather put up with Izzy's bossiness than lose her.
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Chapter 4
Narrator: Wednesday, May 17 & Thursday, May 18.
Wizard was trying to wrap up some loose ends quickly so that he could attend the Research and Development meeting that Will had called for the 19th. Will and TG had returned from Britain on the 16th and both had met briefly with everyone and then taken a couple of days away from Wilizy business. Izzy and Yollie disappeared with them. Everyone was surprised that Will had called this first ever meeting of the science staff; they assumed that it was because Mac had advised the Wilizy that more people should know what he was doing. After Yollie and TG reappeared, they announced that there'd be another Yolanda in the family around Christmas. To ease the confusion from having four generations of Yolandas in the family, they were going to call the baby Yo-Yo for the first couple of years. When everyone was prepared for the shift, Yollie would like to take the Yolanda name.
On the 17th, Wizard and Wolf were inspecting the crates that the Wilizy had liberated f
rom the first pirate ship that they had attacked. The long voyage from Asia had not been kind. Most of the cargo had been perishable fruit and vegetables and these were now all mush. Partially hidden within the goop of the twelve fruit crates were a dozen small trees. These had actually fared quite well as the mush from the fruit had provided enough sustenance for them to live on. As well, ample sunlight had filtered through the filaments. As a result, the trees had actually grown and branches with green leaves were peeking through the wooden slats that made up the tops of the crates. The contents of the thirty crates of perishables were indescribably smelly.
Three other crates contained cartons of remote controlled model airplanes. This was a balsa wood airplane with a tiny solar-powered single propeller motor to give it flight. The remote control unit was likely powered by a pinky-ring battery, but they didn't open one up to inspect it. Wolf said that his brothers would probably like to see if they worked, so he brought all three crates of model airplanes to the compound. Wizard also brought the goop-filled crates to the compound on the assumption that Yolanda could use them as fertilizer for her vegetable patch. Neither Wolf nor Wizard knew much about gardening, but they knew that something that smelled like this belonged deep in the ground. They'd also give the little trees to Yolanda. Perhaps she'd know what they were.
There was a second shipment waiting for inspection in the freight queue in the sky – the contents from the North Korean freighter that had been liberated in Operation Raise the Jolly Lucas. The most important contents, of course, were the crates and crates of brain-bands. This part of the cargo consisted of huge but relatively light crates, all with markings in English that indicated the contents and the intended recipients. Brain-Bands, Department of Public Safety, Alberta.