Break On Through (To the Other Side)

“Slow down, slow down,” Betty’s constant whispering was actually soothing instead of annoying. Nancy carefully rested the back legs of the electric wheelbarrow and locked the wheels. It was top-heavy and in her excitement, she had been pushing it aggressively along the sidewalk that happened to be bumpy thanks to the roots of numerous trees shoving the concrete slabs up. She was fit for her advanced age, but not strong enough to maneuver an unwieldy single-wheel barrow. 

She wiped off the beads of sweat from her brow and smiled a thank-you at Betty. Then she started removing the elastic fasteners from their hooks and rolled back the baby comforter that had been enlisted as a tarp for that night. She adjusted her headlamp so that it pointed only at the task at hand. She gingerly lifted the small packet of C4 explosive with wires sticking out of it from a pile of several similar packets.

Helene unzipped her fanny-pack and pulled out an old-school pager that was to serve as the trigger for the bomb. She took out the tiny battery from the pager, tested it, and inserted it back in. She nodded at her two best friends. From one of the umpteen vest pockets, Nancy extracted the burner phone that would send the signal to the pager. She swiped through the list of pagers and sent a test signal. The monochrome display of the pager briefly glowed and a message scrolled across, “BUILD THE DAMN WALL!” 

Nancy winked. She was the one who had picked that message. Not that anyone else was going to read that message as it was going to appear right before the bomb detonated. Helene carefully wiped her fingers on the cotton towel stuck in her belt and connected the pager to the wires coming out of the bomb. Silently, they high-fived each other. 

They switched off their headlamps and peered around the trunk of the giant redwood tree. They had already picked out the container for the bomb. It was the bottom half of a wine barrel serving as a pot for the flourishing geranium. The pot stood about ten yards from the front door of the Mayor’s home. The main reason for selecting that pot was that it was not covered by the motion sensors which would have flicked on the floodlights in the yard. 

Nancy pulled out a small cloth bag full of confetti from the wheel-barrow and inserted the live bomb in it. Then she crouched and quietly ran to the pot. With the help of a tiny scoop, she dug a hole large enough for the bag with the bomb, stuffed it in carefully, and lightly covered it up with the soil so that it was not visible but still close to the surface. The objective of the explosion was spectacle. Not damage and injury to anyone or anything except the pot. She retraced her steps, covered the wheelbarrow with the baby comforter, fastened it firmly, and invited Helene to push it. 

“One down, six to go,” she murmured, mostly to herself. This was easy-peasy! 

She had blown up far more tricky things in her youth. The ones she was most proud of were the control hubs of oil and gas pipelines across the western US. Usually, they were located in remote areas and were invariably unmanned even though constantly monitored. She and her crew would descend on them like masked ninjas and plant their bombs while making ugly gestures at the cameras pointing at them. If there were culverts that led to those hubs, they were also blown up to slow down the repair teams. It didn’t end the oil and gas companies, but certainly caused enough damage to put a substantial dent in their insane profits. She had never been caught.

They reached Betty’s old Subaru that was parked a couple of blocks away. Betty was driving and as she pulled away from the curb, a cop car rolled by. Helene was riding shotgun and turned to give a beatific smile to the cop. It was not as if any cop was going to do anything to three old white ladies in a mud-splattered Subaru in the middle of the night. The only possible explanation was that they were probably going home after a book club that went too long. But this particular cop did stop and she did step out of the car and walked all the way over to Betty’s window. 

“What’s up, ladies? Ain’t it a bit late to be out?”

Betty sighed theatrically and said, “on our way home, officer. One of our friends was feeling sad and we were trying to cheer her up.”

“Alrighty then! Drive safe.”

Ann, the diligent cop, was about to step back and let them go when Nancy rolled down her window and stuck out her head. 

“Oh hi Ann! It’s me, Nancy. From the jiu-jitsu club? Down by the waterfront? You came by last month to talk to our latest class on self-defense? Remember?”

Ann’s brow furrowed slightly. Yeah, she remembered that. She also remembered the exact words her supervisor had used to describe Nancy when he had sent her out on that community relations gig, “ooohhh Nancy! She was a nasty one back in the day when I was new on the job. Always causing trouble. But always careful not to get caught.” Then he had promptly laughed away Ann’s follow-up questions. Now, Ann began to wonder what these three old ladies were really up to that night.

“Yeah. I remember you. How is the class going?”

“Ohh very good! You really inspired some of our younger students. Thanks for stopping by that day. ”

“My pleasure!”

They waved at her and drove off. Ann didn’t pause and went straight to her car. She had already made a note of the car’s license plate. She fed it into the monitoring system and asked it to track the car. Something didn’t seem right about that conversation. She couldn’t really put her finger on it. But something was off. Better to monitor them than regret later. Then she continued on her patrol. 

###########

Betty pulled into Nancy’s driveway and switched off the car. 

“I think we should change cars. I don’t like the fact that a cop saw us. Let’s use Nancy’s.”

Helene and Nancy looked at each other and shrugged. They transferred all of their stuff into Nancy’s rusty Subaru and drove off to their next target. 

The planting of bombs at the next three targets went as smoothly as they could have imagined in their wildest dreams. And then Nancy’s phone buzzed. They were supposed to have left their personal phones at their homes. But Nancy’s had been in her car and she had forgotten all about it until it buzzed in the glove box. She pulled over in a dark lane and answered it while Helene rolled her eyes. 

The speaker crackled and gargled and spit out noise. She was about to hang up when Tim’s faint voice came through, “hello! MOM? Can you hear me?” 

“Tim? What’s going on? Where are you?”

More crackling and gurgling and other indescribable noises emerged from the phone. 

“This hurricane is the real deal, mom. A Category 6! If the scale went up beyond 5, that is.”

“What now! Are you okay?”

“Aaah. That’s why I am calling you.”

Crackling and more crackling and some buzzing. 

Then silence. Frantically, Nancy dialed back the number that Tim had called from. Nothing. Not even a busy tone. Just nothing. 

It had been so quiet in the car that Betty and Helene had heard everything. 

“Do you think he is okay?” Nancy whirled around. 

“Do you… ??” 

Helene was sitting in the back. She leaned over and squeezed Nancy’s shoulder. 

“I am sure he is fine,” she added.

“Of course! He called, didn’t he? He must be in a safe place to do that!” murmured Betty.

Several moments passed as they looked at each other in turn and the phone desperately hoping for it to vibrate. But nothing. 

“Where is he right now?” Betty asked.

“Dhaka. Bangladesh, I mean. He went there last week.” 

“Umm… where?”

“He is doing fieldwork in Dhaka.”

“Huh! Little Timmy - halfway across the world. Who would have thunk!”

“I thought he was majoring in Astrophysics. Didn’t know Bangladesh had anything to do with that!” Helene pondered.

“I dunno. His advisor has invented some new kinda material to purify water. Tim said that they are testing those filters in the field.” 

“Still dunno what that has got anything to do with stars and planets.”

###########

Ann pulled over in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station just off the highway. Time for a break! 

It was a cliche, but still, she bought a donut to go with her coffee and meandered back to her car. She loved this part of her job. The parking lot was on top of a cliff soaring over the Pacific. The fog had rolled in as usual and she could barely see more than a few feet over its edge. But she could still hear the waves crashing on the rocks at its base. That combination of nothingness and immensity was transcendental in her humble opinion. But she was not feeling that at the moment. 

Out of curiosity, she pulled up the screen showing the last location of Betty’s Subaru. Then she overlayed it with the registered addresses of the three women. Betty seemed to have gone to drop off Nancy. But after that, there was no sighting. That was odd! 

On a hunch, she ran the license plates of Nancy’s and Helene’s registered vehicles through the system. Nancy’s car showed up exactly on the same camera where Betty’s had been seen last only a few minutes before that. Huh? Maybe, Betty’s car broke down and she took Nancy’s to go home? 

She kept tracking Nancy’s car and the circuitous track it left on the screen showed no indication of that car going anywhere near either Betty’s or Helene’s homes. What the hell were they up to?

The donut was gone while she was pecking away at her laptop with one hand. The latte was still too hot to sip. She sat back and tried to imagine plausible explanations for this strange behavior. As far she could tell, there was no real pattern to where both Betty’s and Nancy’s cars had been seen over the last couple of hours. It seemed as if they were out for an aimless drive in the middle of the night. Then why had they lied to her about that friend? It wasn’t a crime to wander around.

She took one thoughtful sip of the latte and started searching for general information on the three women. The top hit, a short video clip, showed them, literally, hissing at a city council meeting. What the fuck? 

She scrolled through some more videos where the women could be seen holding signs of “Build the Wall” and “Down with the Outies” in many of them. Finally, she started playing a recent one. She barely sipped the latte even though she was holding it close to her lips. What Nancy was yelling as Helene and Betty stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her sounded genuinely unhinged. 

Nancy was yelling at the city council, “our businesses on the waterfront are drowning because you are not using the taxes we pay to build the seawall that would protect us. The king tides have swept in at least ten times in the last three years. Each time, we had to spend thousands of dollars of our hard-earned money to repair the flood damage. And before you ask, those damned insurance companies didn’t pay a dime. Nor has the government, including you, provided any emergency support to the likes of us. If this goes on, our savings will be gone in no time and we would be bloody homeless. So build that seawall and do your goddamned job!”

Then Helene stepped up, “for the record, we never voted to join that global treaty where you let guest voters from around the world to participate in our elections. They don’t live here and neither do they pay any taxes. Why is their damned opinion relevant to what we do in our town? It never made any sense. We shall keep campaigning to withdraw our town from that treaty. And also, we are fucking tired of our money being sent elsewhere. That whole thing you go on and on about, what is it, greater-common-good? It is all a sham. First do good by us. Your citizens. Screw those damned guest voters!”

Betty shouted the same slogans and Ann noticed that a few other folks joined them. This was so absurd that she didn’t know how to react. She felt that these issues had been resolved. Several years ago, with an overwhelming majority the town had voted to join the new global treaty where randomly selected voters (aka “guest voters” or as Helene referred to them “outies”) from outside of their town, even those in other countries, were allowed to vote in their town’s elections. The guest voters were required to be formally registered in the towns that were also part of the global treaty. All those towns had to largely align their voter registration practices. The selection of guest voters was completely randomized. Also, the number of short-listed guest voters was capped at a fifth of the number of registered local voters. 

This was a reciprocal arrangement. Even she had once voted for an election in a small city in Philippines. The whole point of that global treaty was to include a more diverse set of perspectives in local decision-making since there were times when local policies had unexpected global implications. The guest voters had a month before they voted (through a secure online mechanism) to educate themselves about the election they were participating in. They could, of course, converse with the local voters, too. This had been a huge success in building camaraderie across the thousands of towns who were in the global treaty. The number of towns that joined the treaty kept going up all the time. She had no idea that there still existed some folks who hated it so much. 

She shook her head in exasperation. And that seawall was a complete boondoggle. It was going to cost an arm and a leg and achieve absolutely nothing. The town had studied it to death. Instead, the long-term strategy was to abandon the waterfront. The town had been helping the affected businesses and homes to relocate. Few had taken advantage of the program. Most of them, like Nancy, had been too stubborn to budge. Ann had never been to a city council meeting and this was first time she saw what went on there. The words of her supervisor suddenly popped into her head, “you got no idea what Nancy used to get up to when she was younger. Oooh… she was a hell-raiser!” 

She dialed her supervisor with a sense of urgency. After the tenth ring, a sleepy voice answered, “this better be good!” 

“Why did you say Nancy was a hell-raiser in her youth?” 

“What the… what? Who?”

“That old woman who runs that jiu-jitsu club down by the waterfront. Remember, you had told me to go and give a lecture on self-defense a few weeks ago?”

“It is 3 am, Ann. What’s really going on?”

“Why did you say that?”

There was a long pause and some rustling in the background. Her supervisor murmured something that Ann couldn’t hear and then the sound of heavy footsteps came through. 

Finally, “well, she was one of those anarchists in those days. I don’t know all the details, but she used to be tight with a bunch of those hippies who were rumored to have blown up a bunch of pipelines around the refineries. Mind you, those were rumors only. No one was ever caught. It all died down eventually and the companies didn’t really push to convict anyone. Insurance covered their losses. When she moved back in town - she grew up hereabouts - a lot of tongues wagged. Anyhow…”

“What do you think about those rumors?”

Another long pause and the sound of a glass being filled with water. A loud gulp came through.

“Tell me, Ann. Why are you bringing this up now?”

“I stopped her and a couple of her friends earlier tonight. They seemed to be loitering around and I dunno, something made me suspicious. Then I tracked their cars when I was on my break. They seemed to have swapped cars after I stopped them. And that second car is still wandering around all over the town. No pattern. It doesn’t feel right to me. They are up to something.”

“Umm… she is old. Maybe, she can’t sleep. Maybe, they are just out for a drive. God knows why people do that. But they do. It’s not a crime. Just forget it. Okay?”

“Yeah. Maybe, you are right. By the way, did you know they have been pretty vocal about that build-the-seawall and down-with-the-outies demands? I saw some videos from the recent council meetings. They were so mean.”

“What’s new! There are many nutcases like that in every town. Their bark is way worse than their bite.”

“But you told me that she blew things up?”

“Listen Ann. Those are rumors. No evidence whatsoever.”

“I wonder, though. They seem to be really angry. I am scrolling through their social media and there is a lot of threatening going on.” 

“For fuck’s sake, Ann! They are old women. They ain’t gonna doing something crazy. Maybe they are dumping flyers around town. Maybe they are just plonking lawn signs. C’mon! I had a long day. I need to get back to sleep.”

“Yeah. Whatever!” Ann hung up. 

That call had made her feel way more suspicious than she was feeling before. Bombs? Had he just said that? She decided to abandon her usual route and instead track the locations visited by the three women. 

##########

Nancy was peering through the wind-shield from the dark corner across the intersection where Helene and Betty were planting the last bomb. This was designed to be the biggest one and it was right in front of the City Hall. That pretentious tangle of metal masquerading as a sophisticated sculpture was to be destroyed in the explosion. 

She was waiting in the car because Helene and Betty had persuaded her to be the lookout. Their dear friend was not in any condition to handle high explosives. Her hands were shaking so badly as she kept thinking about Tim. They were shaken, too. But someone had to get the job done. The town and the city council had to be told loudly and clearly that the status quo was not gonna work anymore. They were not going to be run out of their own town by those damned “outies” and the bloody sea. They were gonna fight back with everything they had. 

It was time to take “Big Government” down a few notches once again. They had done it in the past when the feds had tried to build ridiculous highways in their beloved Redwoods. They had done it when the local and state governments had conspired to build ports to ship oil and gas to Asia under the guise of economic development. And they had done it when those same governments had tried to shove ginormous warehouses and data centers in their communities with the hope of generating massive tax revenues from rich-as-fuck corporations. 

Again and again, they had “gone to the mattresses” and fought off those abominations. It had been a while since the governments had tried any new atrocities. In fact, they had begun to think that they wouldn’t need to get their hands dirty ever again. But that was not to be. Here they were, again, making a major statement that would literally and figuratively shake the very foundations of this ridiculously unrepresentative government. Betty’s ancestors were part of the original Tea Party movement and had fought to rid themselves of the British government imposing its will from across the ocean. In many ways, she felt like she was doing the same all over again three hundred years later. 

Helene and Nancy had worked hard to build their waterfront businesses from scratch. They had been doing good work for their communities. And now when they were literally drowning, their community had simply abandoned them. They were livid. They knew what was to be done and they had no doubt in their minds that they would get it done. It was time to take back power from the hands of these imbeciles. Time to give that power back to the people of their town. That is how democracy worked. They had to do this ugly thing. 

##########

Methodically, Ann traced the first sighting of Betty’s car around 1 am. Betty had picked up her two friends and then started their weird midnight jaunt. Ann drove slowly looking for any signs of unusual things on the route they had taken. Nothing stood out. It was dark with splotches of glittering white streetlights. All of the locations she was driving by were in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Nary a sign of mischief anywhere. No flyers. No lawn signs. Nothing. She covered most of the ground traversed by the three women and was about to accept the fact that she had been paranoid when a thought came to her mind. She pulled over to the side of the road and started pecking away at her laptop. 

##########

The mood in Nancy’s car was somber. They had flawlessly finished the main part of their mission. If not for Tim’s predicament, they would have been jubilant. The bombs had been carefully placed in their designated spots and ready to put the fear of god in the hearts of the city council. It was now a matter of waiting for less than an hour before they pressed the button. 

“Any updates from Tim?” Betty whispered. They had decided to pull into the parking lot behind the Ace Hardware store about half a mile from city hall. It was, of course, completely deserted at that time. It was dark and would stay that way as the thick fog didn’t really begin to burn off until late morning if at all. 

Nancy shook her head. She pulled out her phone for the umpteenth time and stared at it. She tried dialing back the number from which Tim had called. And unexpectedly, the tone of ringing erupted from the speaker. They all bent toward the phone just as the call was answered and Tim’s faint voice responded, “hello? Mom?”

“Tim! Tim???” 

Even before Nancy could get the next few words out, he said, “listen mom. I love you. Okay? I love you.”

“Ohh… I love you too, Tim. Why the hell are you saying that right now! Are you safe?”

“I… I love you. There you are. We are all in a boat somewhere in the delta south of Dhaka. Maybe, a hundred miles from the city. I dunno.”

“Are you okay?”

“Dunno mom. It has been a couple of days of pounding rain and wind and uhhh… well, we are still afloat.”

“Oh my god!! Tim? Why did you have to leave the city? Dammit! Why don’t you ever listen to me!”

“Yeah… well… I guess… I take after you. You don’t listen to anyone either.”

Tim’s shy chuckle reached out all the way from ten thousand miles and tore up Nancy’s heart. Tears started streaming down her cheeks as she clutched the phone as if her life depended on it. 

“What do I do, Tim? What do I do? Shall I call the embassy?”

Then she swore to herself. There was no freakin’ embassy in Bangladesh anymore. 

“I gotta go mom. Others need to call their family, too. I love you. I hope, I see you again. Thanks for everything!” 

The call ended abruptly and Nancy just stared at her phone. She hit the redial button. But the call instantly failed. Betty and Helene were in shock. 

Sweet little Timmy was about to die. The kind boy who would bake cookies for them when he came home from college was in trouble. The scaredy-cat Tim who couldn’t watch a horror movie unless he was sitting huddled next to his mommy was lost. How the hell did that happen!

Betty leaned over and pulled Nancy in a tight hug as her friend’s silent sobs threatened to explode. Helene put her arms around their shoulders. The three die-hard friends tried to find some semblance of strength from each other. 

An owl hooted softly from somewhere. That sound penetrated through the haze of tears as they moved apart and wiped their eyes and cleared their noses. 

##########

Ann had been patiently entering the addresses of all the city councillors and the mayor in the mapping system. Then she overlayed the route taken by the three women on that. Her hunch was right. The women had definitely been in close vicinity of the councillors’ homes. Her heart started pounding. Were these harmless visits with maybe threatening letters dumped into the mailboxes? Or did they do something far more sinister? 

She couldn’t bring herself to think that those three sweet old women were actually capable of something as violent as planting bombs. She tried to recall everything about the moment she had stopped them earlier that night. What was in that car? She had casually swept the car with her torch. But it had been quick. She remembered one half of the backseat was down and the entire space behind the backseat was full of something bulky. What the fuck was that? 

She was desperately trying to picture it. Stars? Rainbows? No! Those weren’t toys. It was soft. Right! It was a kid’s blanket covering something large. Something was sticking out. A stick? No. A couple of handles and one large wheel. It must have been a wheelbarrow. But who covered a wheelbarrow with a kid’s blanket? And why was the blanket carefully fastened with elastic bands. That is fucking suspicious. Right? Right?

She didn’t know what to do next. She was frantically chewing her lower lip in confusion. Finally, she re-dialed her supervisor’s number. 

“Jesus Christ! Give it a goddamned rest already!”

“Boss, they were visiting the homes of all the city councillors from 1 am to 4 am. Every single one! They have still not gone back to their homes. I can’t locate them right now. The last sighting was on one of the roads heading toward downtown.”

“Wait… what did you just say?”

“Which part?”

“All of them? Are you sure?”

“I am sure. I drove their route. But, there was no sign of anything out of the place.”

“Damn! And the last one was downtown? Which end?”

“Lemme check. The north end.”

“That is near our HQ.”

“And city hall!”

“Shit!!”

“And one more thing…”

“Spit it out already!”

“They had a wheelbarrow in their car covered up in a kid’s blanket. Bulky. Dunno what was in it. I didn’t ask.”

“Dammit Ann. You should have started with that. What the hell is Nancy up to, now! Damn her.”

“Do you think… do you REALLY think… they are gonna do something like the old days?”

“Fuckin’ goddamned fuck! Fuck! I dunno. I really hope not. Okay, I am going to get you the authorization to locate their cellphones and see if you can find their exact location right now. Meet me at HQ in 15 minutes.”

“On it.”

Ann waited for her supervisor’s authorization to come through. She fired up the mobile phone location software on her laptop and the moment the notification popped up, she logged in. She entered the three phone numbers and started praying that all were at their respective homes. Almost instantly, Betty’s phone showed up in her apartment. Then Helene’s showed up in her rickety houseboat off the marina where coverage was spotty. Most importantly, Nancy’s was not at her home. It was located beside the downtown Ace Hardware. 

Fuck! 

##########

The three friends waited in silence. A frenzy of thoughts coursed through their minds. About Tim, about their lives, about what they were gonna do in a few minutes, about everything under the sun and more. Nancy was incessantly cracking her knuckles. Betty’s right knee was bouncing metronomically. A nerve was visibly twitching on Helene’s forehead. They were trying to not lose their minds. Every breath was a prayer for Tim’s safety. 

“Are we doing the right thing? I mean. Maybe, we should pause and maybe, think about this again. Maybe, come back tomorrow?”

A few moments slithered by. Then Nancy began to shake her head slowly and then vigorously. 

“Fuck no! We are doing this. I know Tim is in trouble. But I can’t do anything about that. This. This problem we have in our town? We can take care of that for sure. We cannot back off now. It has to be done. The bombs are in place and we just need to press the button at 5 am when the online broadcasts are scheduled to go out. Those bloody councillors and the rest of their supporters have to know that we are not harmless protesters. We are not going to be brushed off. They must build that seawall. And in our town, the only ones who have a say in the town’s future are those who live in it. We ARE doing this!”

Betty stopped moving her knee and stared at Nancy’s vehemence. Then she looked at Helene. No one said anything. The dashboard clock ticked toward 5 am. Ten minutes to go. 

##########

Ann was waiting at the HQ when her supervisor walked in. He had roused all the officers and told them to be on standby for his orders. 

“What do you have?”

“Two phones are at their respective homes. Nancy’s is next to the Ace Hardware store two blocks from here.”

“They could all be there. The other two must have left their phones at home on purpose.”

“Yeah. I stayed away from Ace Hardware on my way to the HQ. Didn’t want to alarm them in case they saw me.”

“Good call, Ann. Very good. Okay, I am going to dispatch teams of two to each councillor’s home and evacuate not just them but also their neighbors. That is the least we can do right now until we know what they are up to.” 

He flipped the switch and issued his orders. Then he called the bomb squad from the city across the bridge to come and check out all the councillors’ homes.

“Now you and I are going to quietly go on foot to the Ace Hardware parking lot and see what is going on.”

##########

The phone buzzed once. Nancy picked it up. Unknown number. Then it went silent. A few moments crept past. Again it buzzed and Nancy immediately answered. Tim’s exuberance burst out.

“Phewwww… mom. We made it! We are safe!”

“Ohhhh Timmy. Thank god! But are you still in the boat?”

“We are definitely not in any boat. In fact, I am inside a sturdy wooden hut in a large village sitting on top of a hill. The flood waters are sweeping by. Mind you, the rain is still coming down hard. But we are finally in a dry space. You won’t believe, but these kind people are making rice and fish stew for us. And I am using their satellite phone to call you. How cool is that!” 

“You scared me so much, Tim! That last time we talked…” 

“Well… to be honest, mom, that feels like an eternity ago. We really thought that we were gonna drown. The lights in the village guided us in the torrential downpour. Can you believe it? There is electricity here in the middle of nowhere. Thank you very much solar panels and batteries! Plus they have clean drinking water and lots of food stored away in a small refrigerated shed. They told us that we could survive for at least a week. Of course, they are hoping that the storm will pass by soon. Only then the rescue teams can pick us up.”

Nancy heaved a long sigh of relief. 

“But, here is the coolest thing ever, mom. I HAVE to show it to you. You are gonna be so proud when you see it! You will also know the reason why they are treating us and especially me so well here.”

The screen switched and the hut came into view. Then Tim flipped the camera toward himself and smiled at her. She couldn’t help herself and caressed the screen. He flipped the camera again and started walking toward the entrance of the hut. He stepped out and focused the lens on the huge plaque stuck in the wall. 

“Read this!”

The three friends squished their heads together to read the text on the plaque. 

It said, “Thank you to the kind people of the Fog City in the great State of California of the United States of America. Your generous grant supported the relocation of our village from the floodplain to this hill. It helped us build all of the basic infrastructure. Without your love, we would have been washed into the Bay of Bengal a long time ago. We shall be forever grateful to you and your future generations.”

Tim’s face swam into the camera and he was grinning. 

“Remember that town proposition from two years ago? The grants that we gave to half a dozen villages in Asia and Africa? This was one of those villages. When I told them where I was from, I kid you not mom, they, practically, lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me all the way from the jetty to the top of the hill singing at the top of their voices! They were so happy to actually meet someone from the place that had saved their village. Gave them a chance to survive the onslaught of climate change!” 

The faces of a few folks from the village popped up in the frame next to Tim’s face. They were all laughing and smiling. Then they started clapping their hands as they said a huge thank you to the three women peering at them from the screen. 

“Okay. I gotta go. Food is ready and I am starving. I haven’t had anything to eat for like two days. I will call you later. Bye, mom! Love you! And I will be back soon!”

The clock had ticked past 5 am. Nancy couldn’t look away from the dark screen of the phone. Finally, she looked up at her friends. 

Helene was in a trance-like state. Betty’s eyes were filled with tears of joy. 

“Was he referring to that proposition we tried to defeat so that we could use those funds to build our seawall? If I remember correctly, all the councillors campaigned for it. And all the outies voted for it. That is why it won. Didn’t it?”

Nancy whispered to no one in particular, “are we the bad guys?”

THE END