Millie's Manifesto

By Martin Copeland

Millie Wise-Walker, the one they point to when the aliens say "take me to your leader" has an all-consuming interest in scientific evidence and freedom from doubt. 54DNMG30N4N Sol Regional Envoy for W.E.I.R.D.O, The Westside Exploratory Interstellar Realty Development Organisation commissioned Qwerty 1! and Secret 1!, twin surveillance operative

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637679456

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Copyright © 2022 by Jangala

Paperback: 978-1-63767-944-9

eBook: 978-1-63767-945-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022909613

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Millennials

Chapter 2: Self-adjusting Equilibrium

Chapter 3: Millies Manifesto

Chapter 4: Bitcoin Millionaire

Chapter 5: Zeek the Unique

Chapter 6: Mission Possible

Chapter 7: Baby Animals

Chapter 8: Good Seed Bad Seed

Chapter 9: The Games People Play

Chapter 10: The Airlift

Chapter 11: Lying Eyes

Chapter 12: Not the One

Chapter 13: Coco Loco

Chapter 14: The Big Truth

Chapter 15: The A Team

Chapter 16: The Memorandum

Chapter 17: Open for business

Chapter 18: Help from above

Chapter 19: Fly on the Wall

Chapter 20: The Summit

Chapter 21: That’s Our Guy

Chapter 22: Day Two

Chapter 23: The Typhoon

Chapter 24: Missing in Action

Chapter 25: The Perfect Son

Chapter 26: The Despair of illness

Chapter 27: The Illness of Despair

Chapter 28: The Intervention

CHAPTER ONE

The Millennials

Market day is a stadium bar full of chaotic movement. Kyle tracks the coordinated movement of the Uptown Gang as if through a zoomed in window. Like confident predators they act casually, with eyes flashing and ears straining. Kyle’s friend the rooster from the coffee house is greeted like a reigning world champion by the Uptown Gang. The familiar sights of cross walking strangers elicit no response. The familiar movement of his handler means showtime. The idealic day trip to the top of the island turned into a medivac of sorts. Kelsea could not bare to have her Millennial sensitivities trashed any longer and went back to the truck feeling sickened and betrayed. Kyle, paradoxically, discovered a Nihilist streak in him he never knew he possessed. Kelsea Wise and Kyle Walker are walking across a new world map. The 1990s was a window in time to play a new game,a game of chance with 2 dice not chess. Lots of new regimes and former colonies flying solo. Not such a convenient time for internet connectivity. So, only the bravest went off-grid out of the fear that no-one would appreciate their photography of their lifestyle on the web until they returned home. Kyle and Kelsea’s cell phones move from 4 bars to no bars in record time on the back of a tip truck headed for the top of the island. The first thing that they noticed were trees the size of apartment blocks. You don’t realize how big the trees are because every one is as big as the next one. As you rise you travel through an alpine zone with deer and meadows, onward and upward towards the highest point of the island.

The trip up was not new even in a new country. Hairpin bend to hairpin bend a la Tour de France mountain stages. The alps are a pleasant surprise as not too many people can really say they see an alpine meadow every day. The peak, however, is an assault on the senses. After the truck spends half of your day climbing 5000 feet into the sky there may be an expectation of a ridge allowing you to view the other coast on another sea. A single ridge? No. Many smaller ridges heading off in all directions creating a Land of Five Hundred Hills is a better description. It is not until the vehicle comes to a complete stop do their senses finally surrender and accept what they paid $10 for earlier in the day. As their heroic mechanical donkey takes a well-earned rest after its morning half-marathon, the enormity of those trees becomes apparent. You can hide your extended family up one of these things. And the family cow! And a grand piano! announced Kyle.

Kyles story is a dinosaur skeleton reconstructed without all the bones. A well-meaning government worker, accepts his first and last ethical job in a remote semi-desert community to co-ordinate the sport and recreation activities of its wayward youth. The constant crackle of dry stoney Earth follows you wherever you go. His boss sits at his desk in the city, restless, irritable and constantly distracted by his co-workers chatter as they identify with one another’s youthful enthusiasm. He adopts an ‘all or nothing’ approach to the solution by directing the entire budget to achieving the goal of winning the football playoffs for the first time. Winning the play-offs requires a three hundred mile round trip to the nearest town every Saturday for three months. Most of the people in their small town arrived to support the boys once a week mostly at their own expense. Engaging the community is easier to do than you might think because it often only takes one motivated person to inspire others to great deeds in these kinds of situations. There was no shortage of good-will in any worthwhile project for the benefit of their little town. The boys simply wanted to play football either in front of the whole town or in front of three dirty dogs and a couple of crows. A home team usually wins every year because they don’t travel very far. Kyle’s boys qualify for the Grand Final event by coming from nowhere to defeat a home team two weeks in a row.

The boys and their band of supporters made the weekly road trip home grateful that their football season was extended for one more week. As the team bus fuelled up for their return leg, the players were all pleased with their efforts, win or lose next Saturday. Kyle was also satisfied with his ability to motivate the whole community into aspiring to something important so that his name will not be forgotten. The old coach, however, continues to struggle with the pressure of expectation that is upon him to make winning the play-offs a reality. Half way home, Old Coach fell ill on the team bus and died of a cardiac arrest on the side of the highway in the hot sun. The only shade tree for 10 miles was already booked by a dying cow a few days earlier. Kyle attended Old Coach’s funeral. His tears flowed readily as he could not help but feel responsible for his part in the whole sorry episode. I would love to report that the boys went back the next week to achieve an historic win for the community in memory of the old man. Life out there is not always filled with happy endings. Weighed down with sadness, their feet could not, would not run. The final score revealed they lost the final by a record margin. Aspiring to a higher purpose does not excuse flawed game plans. The harm that can be done by the Goody Goodys has less to do with social conscience than more to do with finding the right answer to the wrong question. Beware the Goodness of the Goody Goodys. Sometimes helping is hurting despite your best intentions. Kyle was quite despondent on the bus after their Grand Final annihilation. The team captain, however, would not allow Kyle to make Old Coach’s story to be about him. Don’t you go breaking your heart for Old Coach. We can look in your eyes and see your spirit is true. Old Coaches story was written before the beginning of time. He will come back. We always come back. This is Old Coach’s story. You are young like us but you live like it is your last day on Earth. You story will happen when the time is right.

The tipper stopped at the drop-off, the rocky high point with the view to the other side. Drop-offs were not new to Kyle or Kelsea. A drop-off is a wonderful opportunity to photograph yourself looking at it. Before you begin to think that standing on a ridge looking over rivers and valleys carved by a mythical rainbow serpent is all there is, it is useful to get a feeling for altitude. When you are at altitude, you are close to, in or above the clouds. Taking a day trip can trick you into imagining that you are in your local high street on a sunny day with people zipping here there and everywhere, zip zip zip. Even on the most pleasant of days, the night takes on a completely different character.

The dwellings are typically made of corrugated iron and concrete blocks with doors and windows. The houses at the drop-off have no window glass only shutters with wooden louvres that a strong breeze can blow them open if necessary. The front door is a front door, however doors are expensive and all other internal room dividers are curtains. A shutter window can work its way open quietly to lower the ambient air temperature enough to wake you up in the middle of the night. On some occasions the clouds can take on a life of their own. White and icy, they can weave their way into the center of the room like a finger and then go into reverse back outside as if having been pulled back by a giant hand. On other occasions, some unknown presence can try to open the front door but does not know how to turn the handle. This is exactly why the shutters are not locked. Most of the houses follow a basic layout with an elongated living area connecting the front entrance to the food preparation area, the laundry and the cooking fire is a separate structure out the back. The bedrooms with curtains one, two and three connect directly to the living area. When our unknown presence comes to rattle the door, the shutter next to the door can blow open violently causing the curtains to waive like flags in the wind. This is when a white ice cloud can and does travel at speed through the living room like an express train. It has business elsewhere. This is when you know you are at altitude.

CHAPTER TWO

Self-adjusting Equilibrium

The top of the island is neither flat nor steep. The tropical sun still bites and tears at your skin but the mountain air offers a welcome chill. The canopy makes for a patchwork of freezing black shade and burning heat. The five hundred hills keep their own secrets about breezes. What you get are special places. Special places to sit and watch. Special places to warm up. Special places to cool down. Special places to discuss life changing events. Most of all it is a special place for Arabica Coffee. As expected the Wise-Walkers grab the attention of the local children. Kyle comments with a sigh, Why do they make so many kids they can’t feed? Pondering on that thought for about 4.86 seconds, one of the skinny kids invites them to a cup of coffee nearby. Never say no to a cup of Arabica, Kelsea smiles. After settling in one of those love triangles of sun, shade and breeze that only the five hundred hills can provide, the skinny kid takes their orders and disappears. "You know the old guy at the hotel who told us about the war and the peace? I asked him why there were no decent cafes. He told me most of the people are old school and don’t usually drink Arabica coffee on its own. Old school coffee is supposed to be a blend of Arabica beans and Robusta beans. The smoothness of the Arabic combines with the bitterness of the Robusta to give you that ah, I needed one of those sensation.

All of the old plantations are bursting with arabica beans. The plants breached the plantations outer limits a long time ago when the history books kept pace with change. It has been 10