The Secret Experiment: Sequel to the Butterfly Caper

By Barbara G Louise

How could they win the Earth?
They were Anarkhists. Black and white, Gay and straight, diverse in many ways, Poor and semi-affluent-‘Middle-Class,’ spending their young lives protesting government atrocities. They believed their society needed a Revolution, but how long would it be before the Poor and the Oppressed rose up to take their planet and their civilization back from the monsters who held them all in thrall? And how violent would that Revolution need to be?
How could they practice living together in equality before the Revolution?
One woman thought she had the answer: a way to make a peaceful Revolution so that no one — no Black people, no Poor people, no dedicated Activists, no LGBTQ, and no one Oppressed by a vicious economic system — needed to be killed by the violent push-back of the greedy-Rich.
She told her idea to her fiancé, a young activist with some family money who could donate the 100 acres of land needed.
Building their own mortgage-free, solar-powered housing, they became an Egalitarian-Commune, pretending to be starry-eyed dropouts from 21st-century Conservative-leaning cultures in Canada, the USA and Mexico.
In their own Charter School, outside government control, they intended to educate all the Commune’s children in the civilized ideals of the Sharing and Diversity of Voluntary-Socialism.
They believed in the Equality of all people, Christian or not, of whatever Ability to Make Money, or whatever their Colour, Gender, or sexual orientation.
But they discovered they were under surveillance. . . .
* * *
“We’ve caught a spy.” He gestured toward the mashed insect-sized drone on the glass plate under the dissecting-microscope.
“Ah, yes, a modern miracle of miniaturization. Who mashed it?”
“I did,” David said.
“Why?”
“I thought it was an insect biting me.”
“I wish you hadn’t been so good at destroying it,” Allison mumbled, peering intently into the microscopic world.
“That thing is an Enemy,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t have been more gentle.”
She again peered through the microscope at the wreck of the Enemy drone. “Clever,” she said. “They can attach themselves anywhere. That plastic camouflage-carapace gives it a mutable pattern to match whatever the background might be. These damned things were designed to be unnoticed as they spy on us. Even in people’s bedrooms, I’ll bet, via infrared. . . .”
“We don’t know how many of those damned things are all around us, or how long we’ve been spied on,” David snarled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663247797

Barbara G Louise

Barbara G Louise was born Barbara Louise Whittum — the first child of white, ‘middle-class’ parents — in November 1943 in Niagara Falls, New York. She has one brother, a retired Marine and a newspaper publisher. After graduating from Riverside High School in Painesville Township, Ohio in 1961, she attended Kent State University, graduating in 1970 with two bachelor degrees, one in Biology, one in general Science. She became a Jew-by-Choice at the age of thirty. Barbara spent her working career as a Registered Medical Technologist: MT (ASCP), beginning in the Pathology Service Laboratory of University Hospitals of Cleveland and then in the Hematology Laboratory of Mt Sinai Medical Center in New York City, before returning to Cleveland at the age of forty-seven. When she retired after a mild stroke in 2000, Barbara began to write the Science Fiction novels she had always wanted to read, about societies without Racism, Homophobia, or Sexism; but being human societies, they have other problems. When the book-in-hand was published, Barbara was 79, living very happily in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with her long-time same-gender Partner and the latest in a long line of well-loved rescue-cats.

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Copyright © 2023 Barbara G Louise.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4780-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4779-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022921129

iUniverse rev. date: 01/30/2023

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

AUTHOR’S NOTES

for

DR. KATHY BICKMORE

who inspired the author’s interest in non-violent activism;

but she cannot be held responsible for what I made of it

Anarkhism is

Voluntary-Socialism

"We have seen the results of social democracy and it’s Labour Parties; we have seen what the [so-called] Stalinists have done in Russia, China, Albania and their satellites. We have seen how their Left critics in the Trotskyist movement have been unable to come to grips with the real problem.

"And that real problem is the Authoritarian idea that the world can be changed over the heads of the workers. It can, but it won’t be much better. Only [Anarkhism] with its concept of Socialism based on individual freedom and the power of workers’ councils stands apart from all this.

"That is why, despite four decades of repression, the CNT reappeared as a real union after the death of Franco. We believe that [Anarkhism] is not just another choice for those who want a better world. The history of all other Left movements shows [us] that Anarkhism] is a necessity."

~ Eddie Conlon

a Spanish Anarkhist

PROLOGUE

"When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles, in the goal that you’re striving for, not in the way you reach them.

On the other hand, because of the way this society is organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as reactions.

~ Angela Y. Davis, late 20th century

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Someone had passed around a joint of marijuana in the backseat of the car on their way to yet another demonstration against the USA’s military-policing of the entire world. Katerine (Kat) Coglin — a petite, dark-haired white woman in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, wearing tortoise-shell glasses, a black-triangle pin and a rainbow-colored armband— was pleasantly stoned when the demo started downtown in Cleaveland, Ohio’s Public Square. It was enjoyable to be exercising the First Amendment to the US Constitution: "the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble and Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances."

They disembarked their car into a sea of protest signs:

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As a dedicated Anarkhist, Katerine Coglin had been engaged in peaceful protests of one government atrocity or another for all her adult life. So it should not have been a surprise to her when the violence started. But Kat was stoned, seething with good vibes, and feeling magical.

Men in white robes — with pointy hats, faces covered except for eye-holes, obviously Ku Klux Klanners — came out of nowhere swinging clubs, indiscriminately hurting Black and white people in that demonstration of anti-military protestors, screaming "Nigger, Nigger, Nigger! Kill the snowflakes! America First! Jesus Rules!" (and how sad the Nazarene would have been to hear his Christian name used to spread hate). Kat saw it suddenly happening all around her.

In the easy frisson of her stoned-space, she saw a white policeman throw a young Black woman to the ground and begin to bind her hands behind her back with the usual weaponized twist-ties. No policemen were arresting the violent Klanners in their white-sheet, dunce-cap costumes who were attacking the unarmed, legally-demonstrating protestors.

Appalled, stoned, not thinking clearly, Kat rolled up the protest sign she was carrying — LET PEOPLE LIVE !!! — and raised it over her head, intending to swat the uniformed policeman as if he were a bad doggie. The cop turned his head and glared at Kat. The flow of time seemed to stop.

In that instant, although she had always been an activist against Racism — among many other things — Kat had an epiphany, realizing with horrible clarity — oddly for the first time in her life — that despite being terribly oppressed all of her life because she was Queer, she possessed a wealth of White Privilege; and oh! how much that Privilege had always protected her!

The cop turned back to his arrest of the young Black woman. Kat lowered her arm and watched, feeling useless, as the white policeman dragged off his helpless, stumbling, Black captive.

In the chaos of the suddenly-policed "peaceful" demonstration, as Katerine’s marijuana-high began to fade into paranoia — someone bumped into her from behind. It was another cop. As Kat, mostly unafraid, turned to murmur a polite apology, he swung viciously at the left side of her head with his baton, breaking her glasses, splattering blood, knocking her to the pavement, almost unconscious, fortunately still alive.

On the ground, with her one remaining functional-eye, Kat saw — through a blurred forest of legs — one of her fellow protestors — Bradshaw Winters, a white man — use big shears to cut the twist ties binding the stumbling, young Black woman who had just been arrested by the cop, while Alice McConnel, Winter’s strawberry-blonde fiancé, ran into the cop as if by accident, knocking him away from the Black woman. The Policeman pulled-out his gun and fired, hitting Alice in the right knee. She screamed and collapsed. There was suddenly a lot of blood.

Bradshaw continued supporting the Black woman as she disappeared into the crowd. Then, frantic, he turned back to Alice.

Kat blacked out.

*     *     *

She regained consciousness in a noisy makeshift med-station under a grey-green canvas ceiling. She was on a raised pallet near Alice McConnel. Several competent-looking people in surgical gowns and masks were working on Alice’s leg. Some people, including Bradshaw Winters, were holding Alice down —one woman stretched across her chest — while a masked and gowned figure administered a syringe-full of pain medication and then probed into the wound of her ruined knee. Alice screamed.

Hey, lady. Come on. You’re tough. Got more guts than most, One of the gowned people boomed through the screaming.

We’re almost done, darling, Brad Winters said loudly.

Get that bleeder, another gown said.

Okay. Bullet went through and through; missed the thigh-bone.

Good.

Give me that new plastic knee-cap-replacer. Is it sterile?

Yes, another gown said.

Good. Open the pak carefully. Let me sew it up.

Nauseated, Kat turned her head away so she wouldn’t have to watch.

How do you feel? she heard vaguely through Alice’s screaming. Kat looked up to see the kind eyes of a middle-aged woman in scrubs with a mask over her mouth and nose. She had smile lines around her eyes. The woman regarded Kat with concern.

The cop broke my glasses, Katerine said, sounding in her own ears like a petulant child.

Are these yours? the woman asked, holding out Kat’s glasses, the glass broken, the left side twisted out of recognition.

Yes. Oh, damn.

The woman bent to examine the left side of Kat’s skull, Does this hurt? she said, touching with a gloved finger.

Ow! Yes, damnit!

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1

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"Man is born free and he is everywhere in chains."

~Jean-Jacques Rousseau,1762

The Social Contract

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Will this meeting please come to order, Bradshaw Winters said, standing up. He was a young, lean, white man with dark blonde, thinning hair going grey on the sides, in tailored shorts and a crisp Oxford shirt open at the throat.

The others, all friends and ‘Companions in the Struggle’ — as they thought of themselves in a Lefty sort of way — had gathered for that meeting on a Saturday afternoon at the very end of the twentieth century, a few weeks after the anti-military demo in downtown Cleaveland. Due to Global Climate Change, it was chilly for a day in May. They were more than a dozen experienced dissidents, sitting in a circle on folding chairs, in a large, echoing, wood-floored apartment on Mayfield Road in Cleaveland Hills, Ohio, just up the hill from Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city of Cleaveland proper.

There was a long table in the next room set with a catered buffet. Winters, who was one of the most affluent of the crowd, had provided lunch for the meeting he had called. Several people had flown in from NYC, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and Salem, Oregon.

Damion Arthur Jones, a rebellious young Black-man with light-brown skin colour, black kinky hair cut short, a thin face and large dark-rimmed glasses — wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt reading, ‘NO NUKES’ — said, Come-on, Brad. Is this going to be all Parliamentary Procedure, right from the beginning? What’re we here for?

Bradshaw sighed. Can you explain it, Alice? he said to his fiancé, Alice McConnel, who was sitting beside him in a small. soft, upholstered chair with padded arms. It’s mostly your idea, I think.

Alice was an attractive, slim-figured woman of nineteen, crowned with a wild mass of natural strawberry-blond hair, wearing a colorful sun-dress and a soft cotton sweater. She stood up gingerly — her wounded knee was just beginning to heal — waving her hands as if she didn’t know what to do with them. She had little experience with public speaking.

She said, Uh, umm . . . everyone here would like to get rid of Capitalism, I’m sure. Right?

The meeting responded positively.

She continued: "So, uh . . . most classic opinions are, I believe, that in order to free the Working Class from the slavery of Capitalism, we must have a violent revolution, execute the Ruling Class, and smash Capitalism, like in Russia in 1917. Because the super-Rich — in fact even the ordinary Rich and the upper ‘middle class’ — will not give up their money, their perceived dominance, nor their Elitist privileges — without a fight. Right?"

That’s right! Karl Goode said, gritting his teeth. He was an intense young man wearing jeans and a torn T-shirt, balding, in need of a hair cut, with dark brown hair falling messily over his ears. He pushed it back. "We’ll have to reject all namby-pamby, soft-headed . . . umm . . . feminist solutions to the terrible problem of Capitalist rule, and be ready to lead a violent Revolution whenever the most oppressed in our society are finally pushed beyond the brink, and choose, at last, to rise up against the Bourgeoisie. Revolution is a job for men."

What Alice is trying to say, Bradshaw snapped, "is that before we commit to the absolute necessity for a violent revolution, we should now, before the end, consider other ways of ridding ourselves of Capitalism, rather than deciding violent revolution is our only option."

It is! Karl howled. "Our enemies will be violent and horribly, horribly effective in preserving their power and our slavery. We must — MUST! — be even more violent, and organized. We must train ourselves to take advantage of the legitimate fury of the most-oppressed people in our society! I thought that’s why you called us all together, Brad. Real Revolution will be no picnic, no namby-pamby afternoon break in the complacent, bourgeois, womanized flow of middle-class life, we —"

The US government, Alice interjected, has the firepower and the trained Standing Army. . . . akkhk. . . . Grimacing with pain, she limped in place.

Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard. . . . Brad added. And soon, I suppose, a Space Force — He made Alice sit down, murmuring quietly to her, You’ve been wounded, Love. Here, put your feet up. He pulled an empty chair in front of hers and helped her lift her extended, stiff, wounded leg. The cast around her knee, forcing her leg not to bend, was a lump under the cloth of her dress.

The USA has a Standing Fighting Force of Military people all brainwashed in anti-communism, Alice said, "ready to defeat any violent Leftist-attempt at Revolution. Of course, ‘right’-wingnut-violence is OK, apparently, as far as the Government thinks. . . .

Any group of ordinary people, any neighborhood or other area that organizes can be easily flattened by drone bombing or mortar attack, she continued. "They haven’t done it to us yet because the richies don’t want to destroy all that property Banksters still have mortgages on. Never mind how many of their debt-slaves would die. . . . The NRA wants us to believe that if we all have guns, especially assault weapons, then we can defend ourselves against anybody, particularly a Leftist, Socialist, or even — Ha! — a Negro attack, as if Black Americans in general are as hateful and violent as white-supremacists, which they aren’t, most of them. But the reality is that the Government is becoming increasingly ultra-Conservative and anti-democratic, you know, despite occasional pretenses to Progressive values —"

Yes! — a semi-petite, dark-haired white woman in blue jeans and a rainbow-colored plaid shirt, with a black and blue bruise around her left eye, wearing dark-rimmed glasses a bit large for her face — Katerine Coglin said, "The supposed ‘leaders’ of the USA — elected officials — are becoming increasingly contemptuous of ‘Liberal’ ideals such as Free Speech, an end to Racism, Women’s control of their own bodies, the Right to Privacy, LGBTQ Rights, compassionate Health Care for the Disadvantaged, Saving the Poor, and whenever they agree all those are problems, they believe there can be a Capitalist answer to addressing all of them —"

"The US Government is way better equipped with firepower and trained fighters than we have any chance of ever becoming, Alice continued. What Brad and I want to suggest is a possible way we can actually win a Revolution over several generations, without losing lots of good people — I mean many Progressive or Lefty people, Black and Brown, Yellow and Red people, and Progressive whites — losing good people to an oppressive government or to right-wing violence; and be deprived-of, in the end, the free, Cooperative world of Solidarity we want to win."

We’re just talking here, Bradshaw said, trying to entertain ideas, before the decline of Capitalism creates such chaos that we won’t be able to talk and plan together. Because then, we’ll all just be trying to stay alive, and after a pugnacious revolution fails — or even if it triumphs — we will face a violent, authoritarian dictatorship, I believe. You-all realize the basic ideals of a humanist-democracy are already under attack right now in this country. . . .

The hell with it! Karl Goode snarled. "I have better things to do than listen to cowardly Liberal — feminist — clap-trap!" His folding chair fell backwards with a clatter as he launched himself toward the front door out of the apartment.

Ah well, Bradshaw said, as they all heard Goode crashing down the stairs of the apartment house. "Perhaps now we can discuss some new ideas, even though no one of us is actually a Capitalist-loving Liberal — he smiled wryly — and we don’t all agree on everything."

Waving her hand up and then quickly down, Annie Bakersfield spoke up. She was a shy young woman with dark-blonde hair and beautiful long legs, wearing bright-red short-shorts, tennis shoes, and a thin red sweater. She said, Back before the Civil War —

You mean the Civil War before the one we are heading into today, right? Alice McConnel asked. The Civil War in the 1860s which ended chattel-slavery in the USA?

Yes, Annie said. Just before that Civil War, an incident happened in the US Congress which perhaps illustrates our problem. On the Senate floor, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was attacked and nearly beaten to death by pro-slavery Senator Preston Brooks, using his walking cane. Sumner — who barely survived the beating — became a revered martyr in the ostensibly-Free states of the North, and Brooks — the attacker— became a hero among propertied white people of his economic class in the South, in the Slave States.

Ralph Waldo Emerson commented afterwards — uh, I have a copy of his remarks right here — Annie took a three-by-five card from her top pocket and read: "‘I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of Slavery’ — and here I have to add all kinds of slavery besides chattel-slavery, such as wage-slavery, or debt-slavery, etcetera — and Emerson goes on, ‘or we must get rid of Freedom.’"

Annie continued, "Emerson said it so well: ‘I think we must get rid of Slavery, or we must