Here is the story, "Countdown," as mentioned in the post dated September 24. The story appears here in its original, unadulterated, and apparently incomprehensible form:
Countdown
Chelsea stood with
the others in Times Square. A hundred
thousand people waited, perhaps more, their eyes fixed at the giant reader
board. A video feed showed the National
Debt clock, from over on the Avenue of the Americas. The numbers were running backwards.
David had warned
Chelsea, saying there would be too many people down there, worrying that something
would happen. But dammit, this was
important, this was history. Just
because she and David lived together didn’t mean he owned her. So as soon as he left for work, Chelsea had
drifted to the Square, to wait with the others.
A whole section of New York was there.
Hot dog vendors, cabbies, students, old men and women, businessmen,
cops, hookers – like at New Years Eve, all had gathered in the Square,
effectively closing it down, all eyes concentrated on the evaporating debt.
The numbers had
grown to less than ten billion dollars by ten o’clock in the evening. By ten minutes to midnight, it was under a
billion. A thrill of impending pandemonium
ran through the crowd, like a great wave approaching a beach. Like the compression of air before an
onrushing train. It was palpable.
“This is it,”
Chelsea said, to a complete stranger.
“This is really it.”
“Yes,” the stranger
said.
When midnight
approached, when the clock approached zero, everyone in the square began
chanting the numbers, like the countdown to midnight on New Years’ Eve.
“Eleven million….
Ten million…. Nine million…. Eight million…. Seven million… “
Then, it hit zero.
Unbelievable,
ecstatic joy. Clapping, cheering,
screaming, people blowing horns.
Ticker-tape drifting like snow onto the crowd. Baseball caps, hats, and shirts thrown into
the air. Everyone singing, everyone
dancing. Someone Chelsea didn’t even
know grabbed her and kissed her. Chelsea
didn’t mind. She jumped up and down, up
and down, united with everyone in one common event, a complete orgasm of joy
and happiness.
“We’re free,” she
shouted as she jumped, taking up the chant that had started in the crowd. “Free!
Freeeeee!”
Then, the sudden
loud bang at one end of the square.
Something was happening on West 48th street. Chelsea thought someone had lit a very big
firecracker, but suddenly there was an answering bang in the opposite
direction, much louder. A huge cloud of
smoke began to rise over 7th Avenue.
There was another
noise along with the cheering, which sounded like screams. A wave of something shivered through the
crowd, a queer hush, reaching to where Chelsea stood. People around her stopped cheering, and
started looking at either end of the square, blinking their eyes as realization
slowly dawned that something was wrong.
More bangs, and
Chelsea saw the tail-tell chaotic flight of teargas canisters bouncing over the
heads of the crowd. Behind the teargas
was a line of men in uniforms. And
behind them, inching their way up 7th Avenue, were a line of
tanks. More and more faces turned.
The men in uniform
started to fire into the crowd.
At once, the crowd
began to move. Chelsea felt herself pressed
by bodies, feet began to scuffle as everyone began to move from the
violence. There was no room, everyone
pressing away. Chelsea found herself
struggling to stay on her feet.
There were more men
with guns, more tanks moving into the square, from 47th Street, from
46th Street, both ends of 7th Avenue, and from
Broadway. Every route in and out of the
Square was occupied. Tremendous clouds
of teargas rose over the crowd, and the rat-tatat of automatic weapons fire
became constant, the hundreds and hundreds of troops firing directly into the
crowd.
“What’s happening?”
“They’re killing
everyone! They’re killing everyone!”
The press of the
crowd became a vice. Chelsea couldn’t
move, she couldn’t breathe. “My gosh,
David was right!” she thought. Then the panic
kept her from thinking. “David! David!” she shouted, as if he were somewhere
in the crowd, wishing he was there to take her away, to make her safe.
People began hitting others, punching them in the face,
trying to get them out of the way, trying to clamber over them, so they could
somehow escape. People climbed on
benches, and on light poles, trying to get higher up, to see what was
happening, to escape the increasing press of the crowd. But bullets found them. Some of the uniformed men were firing above
the crowd, picking off targets. Others
were firing methodically at the retreating mass of humanity before them: advancing, firing, advancing again. Some in the crowd rushed at the advancing
death, with makeshift weapons, only to be cut down. On 47th Street, about a thousand
people coordinated into a human wave, pressing at the men so they could try to
breech the line. But two tanks fired shells
into the spearhead, decimating it. The
men with automatic weapons concentrated their fire, cleaning up what remained.
This was not a
police action. This was not
dispersal. This was extermination.
All around Chelsea,
there was the sound of metal striking metal, and metal striking flesh. People began to fall, each sudden explosive “Ugh!”
drowned out by all the screaming from those who still breathed. Someone next to Chelsea was struck, fell, and
the press of the crowd made her lose her footing and fall into the sudden small
void over the body. Several people
stepped on Chelsea, she felt pain and indignation. Then, another body fell onto her, and
another.
Pressed under dying
flesh, Chelsea was unable to breathe at all.
She thought, “Why is this happening?”
Then, as blackness began to embrace her, “Why do I have to die? We were happy, I was happy. We were finally free.” After that she thought and felt nothing else.
Chelsea had not
understood; no one did. It was as if the
common people were no longer an asset, but instead they were a liability, now
that they were no longer in servitude. Liabilities
needed to be eliminated, if the spreadsheet was to remain balanced with
something left in the black.
Methodically, the
soldiers moved forward, killing everyone in their path. The tanks rolled over the mountainous piles
of bodies of men, women, and children, making pathways for the troops to
advance on the remaining victims, until within an hour they converged at the
small pockets left in the middle. Few
escaped the Square that night, and few escaped the similar carnage in every major
city, anywhere people had gathered to watch the numbers on the clock reach
zero.
The countdown had
begun.
