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Unity in Action
Part One:
Late in the afternoon of 15th day of June in the year 1773, a young woman leaped into the saddle of a waiting horse and urged it to a gallop before she had even cleared the great stable yard of Placehurst Hall in the county of Rutland. The ironclad hooves of Perseus, her father’s favourite hunter, struck sparks from the cobblestones as she charged out onto the drive, heedless of the cries of the anxious servants behind her.
To any beholder she was uncommonly beautiful, despite the way she rode astride like a man, and despite the anger that flashed across her face like lightning. As she raced out across the park the warm wind incited the dark ringlets of her hair to escape from beneath her bonnet and stream behind her. It must have been the fire in her eyes that ignited the curse she flung from her lips as she thundered on past grazing sheep, past the gamekeeper’s cottage, on until she cleared the estate and at last found herself in the quiet lane that led through the copse and into a small gathering of farm workers’ houses. Here, she reined in the horse, which was sweating and tugging at the bit, and allowed it to continue at a slow trot until she drew level with the front door of the first little cottage. Reaching behind her, she opened the leather saddle bag and pulled out a letter and placed it in the hinge seam of the little wicket gate. Then, without looking to see if she had been observed, she wheeled the horse around and spurred it to a canter back the way she had come.
In less than an hour, the letter would be discovered and opened by a young man by the name of Thomas Paine, local apprentice, and the cottage tenant. In it, he would read the following:
“My dearest Thomas, my warmest thoughts fly to you as I take up my pen, though I can scarcely conceal the abject misery I feel at my father’s resolute opposition to our union. Were it no more than his bluster and his vile threatenings with regard to my dowry, I should at once have cast aside all doubt and flown to your side, my darling. But I yet fear what may become of you once I have defied him so. For I am quite certain that he means to ruin you and to have such impediments put in place against our happiness that we should find ourselves forever confounded. More so, and of utmost importance to me, is a dread suspicion that he will seek to have you tried on a charge of sedition for all the good works you have done, and have written and, I am quite sure, have yet to write. Oh, that the people of England should see a day when their societies and classes are kept apart from one another by such base and meaningless divisions! How can it be held just that men and women of good character, of good heart and of deep learning can be so cruelly punished for the supposed crime of trespass against such false and imagined boundaries? How much stronger would this country be against misfortune if it had but the will to heal these odious divides and to live as one people? Free and unconquerable, with no merit put upon the station of one’s birth, or fortunes, or sex, such a utopia would be the envy of the world! But now, in this my darkest hour, I see the bright beacon of hope that you have lit, my darling. By your writings and your ceaseless labours, you may yet stir in the breast of every English man or woman the will to defeat the leviathan that would consume us all through monstrous greed and prejudice and for that, my love, I remain eternally grateful.
Although my heart yearns for a future more generous than we may expect, I urge you once more to flee to the Americas, for it must surely be within the society of Virginia that your efforts will reap their full reward. If England is lost to division and strife, there may yet be hope of a new paradise in another land. I care not if this be sedition, but I cannot help but think that the colonies are not long destined to remain part of this commonwealth and, if there be a time for men to breathe free, surely it shall begin there. So, I urge you, amidst all my longings and sorrow, to forget me and to take ship to where you may do the most good and to break down those barriers which men have so covetously sought to build. Should anyone ask you what has brought you to their shores, I implore you not to say that t’was love that drove you there but say instead that it was common sense!
With all love and regard, I wish you the greatest of fortune and I shall ever remain your devoted and affectionate friend,
Unity
Part Two:
Late in the afternoon of 15th day of June in the year 1973, a young woman leaped into the saddle of a waiting motor scooter and twisted the throttle so hard that it’s rear tyre squealed as she accelerated out of the great stable yard of Placehurst Hall in the county of Rutland. The bike skidded slightly on the wet cobblestones as she charged out onto the drive, heedless of the cries of the anxious au pair behind her.
To the casual bystander she was uncommonly beautiful, despite the way that she rode like a maniac, and despite the anger that flashed in her eyes behind the goggles. As she raced out across the park, the warm wind pulled at the peak of her crash helmet as the scooter buzzed on, past grazing sheep, past the ruins of the gamekeeper’s cottage, on until she cleared the estate and at last found herself in the quiet lane that led through the copse and into a small gathering of farm workers’ houses. Here, she slowed to almost walking pace, the scooter burbling as it calmed its frenzy, as she looked for the red pillar box.
Seeing it, she reached behind to open a leather satchel and pull out a letter. She gazed at it, transfixed for a moment, then posted it through the slot. Then, wheeling the scooter around she revved ferociously and careered back the way she had come. By the next morning, the letter would be lying on the desk of a young Australian academic who was working as an assistant lecturer at the University of Warwick. In it, she would read the following:
Dear Germaine,
I wanted to tell you, before one more day passes, that you were right about everything. I have confronted my father and got exactly the result you predicted. He is completely and utterly incapable of seeing any future for me but a loveless marriage to an Etonian chinless wonder and is wilfully blind to the entire concept of my seeking out my own destiny. When he discovered the copy of “The Female Eunuch” that you signed for me I admit I was actually glad. Not because it confirmed his worst fears about me but my worst suspicions about him, and his kind. No matter how far we may have come, they would still see us doomed to live unremarkable lives in a wretched patriarchy, with no other destiny than to measure up to some imposed ideal of femininity. I remember when we joked about that old “housewife’s syndrome”, except I know now that it is alive and well today. It’s clearer than ever to me that in one way or another, as women we are each struggling with the same problem. My heart aches for each of us who feels alone in a crowd, alone amongst our families, alone at work, and it is not until now that I have truly felt such anger and impatience at our apparent inability to stand together. Every day, somewhere a woman like me is encouraged or even commanded to throw away an education opportunity that would have empowered her. She is reduced to the level of support staff for the male breadwinner, and is complicit simply because she does not know that she has allies. Not just some vague and unspoken sisterhood but actual fighters for the cause, like you. If I could, I would present you with a medal and then a trumpet so that we could let all the John Knox sympathisers out there know what a first blast sounds like! If we only knew it, we are a monstrous regiment and we can move mountains if we want to. And I intend to start by defying all those parental and social edicts and take up my place at Newnham, and if I’m following in your footsteps then I’m proud to do it. If we cannot do something positive in our lives to bring women together and be a force for change then, quite honestly, what good are we to the world? As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and that is what I intend to take now; I only hope that we can reach our destination in my lifetime. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for showing me that the journey needed to be made. Wish me luck!
Yours, affectionately,
Unity
Part Three
For a while now, the girl had been sitting quite comfortably on the old leather seat when suddenly she levitated into the air; instinctively, she grabbed hold of an armrest to keep herself from lifting off any further.
“For god’s sake, slow down!” she yelled as the open topped jeep careened off a large rock and crashed back down onto the rutted desert track.
“Relax, you only live once, remember?” shouted the other girl as she changed gear and accelerated.
“Yeah, but I’d rather it was for a bit longer, if that’s all right with you!”
The girl who was driving laughed, while behind them a great cloud of dust billowed in their slipstream.
“What’s the satnav say?” She turned, so that her passenger briefly caught a reflection of herself in her mirrored sunglasses.
“One point two miles” said the copilot, looking at her ‘phone. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going yet?”
“That’s need-to-know information. Have a little faith!” She smiled enigmatically, which somehow jarred with the outrageous anachronism of her outfit: rara skirt and trainers, huge bangle earrings and a red headband to keep her wavy hair at bay. In contrast, her companion was at least a decade ahead of her in dungaree cut offs and Nirvana tee shirt. Two bubblegum valkyries in a rented Jeep Wrangler, they bounced their way along the trail for another four minutes of sun, wind and dust before stopping at the base of a steeply angled outcrop of rock. As the engine died, it was as if the sun suddenly became even hotter. The first girl leaped out and half ran, half skipped up the slope and pulled a camera from her shoulder bag.
“What are you doing?” the second girl called after her.
“Taking a photograph for posterity!” she said, which was not quite enough of an answer, not after a mystery tour in hundred degree heat.
“Unity, you get back down here right now and tell me what’s going on!”
“In a second. I’m trying to get the panorama setting to work.” she called back, while fiddling with the tiny travel camera. “There!” she announced, triumphantly. “Now smile!”
The other girl put her hands on her hips and gave a reluctant grimace before Unity put the camera back in her bag and made her way back down.
“Look, I’m serious. We come all this way out here and I get the feeling that whatever we’re up to, it’s not gonna be entirely legal and the thought of seeing the inside of another jail cell without knowing why is making me kinda twitchy, ok?”
“I love the way you worry, Lola!” said Unity brightly. Then she took her by both hands and explained.
“You know how many Fortune 500 companies have toxic income streams?”
Lola shook her head.
“It’s a lot. And do you know how many global transactions take place over just a simple phone line, not counting the internet?”
She didn’t.
“Well, it’s still a lot. It’s their Achilles heel: they were all so busy shoring up their cyberspace security, they forgot about their ‘phones. So, the plan is we exploit that chink in their armour, expose some of their dirty little secrets and the bucketload of harm they’re doing to planet Earth.”
“Which is what we usually do, so I’m guessing there’s a twist this time.” said Lola, still none the wiser.
“Oh, this time it’ll be easy: we’re just going to call everyone and tell them.” said Unity, with a smirk.
“So, hold on, you’re just going to ‘phone up everybody in the world?”
“I didn’t say the whole world, just the continental United States. I like to start off gently.”
“And even though that would be a clearly impossible task to be carried out by a crazy person, we’ve come all this way out here to do it?” It seemed that Lola was still unimpressed. Unity turned and marched back past the Jeep, over to what looked like a metal drain cover at the side of the track.
“Know what this is?”
“A storm drain?” ventured Lola, furrowing her brow. “A storm drain…in the middle of a desert?” Something was beginning to occur to her. Suddenly Unity jumped onto it, a textured steel plate on a shallow concrete plinth about four feet square, and did a little victory dance, swishing her skirt around.
“Hmm, you sure your mom wasn’t in Bananarama?”
“No, but she was in Greenham Common…at least briefly, before they put her in prison.”
“Sorry about that.” said Lola, as she walked over to inspect whatever Unity was standing on. “But I take it from your joyful countenance that we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
“What we’ve found,” said Unity, pointing at the hatch cover, “is a node access point for the main fibre optic highway that runs through Phoenix on its way out of Arizona and into most of Southern California.”
“Please tell me we’re not going to blow it up!” protested Lola, mournfully. “I like my freedom and we could get literally years for this!”
“Then rest easy, fellow warrior.” said Unity, fishing around in her shoulder bag. “We’re not going to blow it up, we’re just going to blind it, temporarily.” Then she produced what looked like a hand grenade and turned the canister around so that the serious looking warning label was visible. It read: ‘L1501 Smoke Cannister. Contains phosphorus and propellant. It is imperative that this device is not detonated within ten metres of bystanders or in an enclosed space. Not legal in the State of California’.
“Wait, hold on, what’s that about ‘not legal in California’?”
“We’re not in California!” said Unity, as if that excused everything. “First, we shift the cover and drop this into the shaft, then it explodes and floods the space with smoke. Then, a very surprised little guy in Phoenix gets a fire warning on the grid monitor so he shuts the whole system down while they investigate. Meanwhile, the network remains live but the traffic volume isn’t regulated while there’s an emergency. And that’s our short but perfectly formed window of opportunity for Anonymous to hack the pipe and send a pre-recorded message out to every relay tower in the US, all of the back of the western seaboard network providers. There’s no way to stop it for another minute and forty five seconds, which is when the little Phoenix guy reboots the safety systems and by then, it’s too late. So, every cellphone in America starts ringing at the same time and everyone who answers is going to hear the same message. Which I didn’t write but it goes something along the lines of ‘Your world as you know it is about to be destroyed by corporate greed and only you can save it.’ Then everyone gets angry, then after that, scared and then, just maybe, they do something. Easy really!”
Lola stared at her, wide eyed.
“Are you telling me you know Anonymous?”
“Are you kidding? No-one knows Anonymous. That’s why they’re called Anonymous.”
“Yeah? So how did you set this up? And who trained you to do all this stuff? Lara Croft?”
“No, my mother.” said Unity, offhandedly. “She’s been into activism for years and believe me she’s got contacts in some very high and very low places.”
“So, what would she say if she could see you here, now, doing what you’re about to do?”
“The same thing I’m going to say to you, Lola my brave warrior: You’ve come a long way baby!”
Together, they spent the next few minutes trying to shift the steel access cover, which actually turned out to be much heavier than Unity was expecting, then they took off their sunglasses, got down on their knees and peered into the dark below.
“Fire in the hole!” said Lola as Unity pulled the pin on the grenade and let it fall into the blackness. Without waiting for the bang, they hurriedly forced the cover back into place and leaped into the Jeep to begin their manic, dusty journey back down the desert track towards the interstate. Barely two minutes later, Lola felt her ‘phone vibrate just as Unity’s began ringing within the depths of her leather bag and then she knew that, all around them, the same call would be resonating in over a hundred million ‘phones across a whole nation.
“Nice going, my eco-warrior!”
“Not bad for a girl from Vermont.” smiled Lola.
“Thanks. Except I’m not from Vermont.”
“Oh? Thought you said you came from Rutland?”
“Wrong side of the pond!” said Unity, swerving to avoid another boulder.
“You mean there’s a Rutland in England too?”
“That’s need-to-know information.” she laughed. “And my lips are sealed!”
Felix Downs
Stamford Creative Writing Group
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