Rosa Jardine folded her arms, sitting at the old kitchen table in the two-room dirt floor house, looking around at her shabby surroundings. She was too tired to mask the look of disdain on her face, and Kenji Nobu, sitting across from her at the table, winced a little in acknowledgement.

“Yes, I choose to live like this. This is the nature reserve’s research station, and I’m allowed to stay here in exchange for weather data and other environmental monitoring information. It can be lonely, but I have my freedom and… obscurity.” Kenji offered the box of fig newtons to Rosa again, but she didn’t respond. Theo, sitting between them, reached over and helped himself to some more. “Your a hungry boy!” Kenji laughed.

Rosa looked disapprovingly at her son, but relented and unfolded her arms. “Mr. Nobu, look at my point of view. I didn’t ask to be mixed up with this ‘movement’ you and Leanna are devoted to. I liked my life just the way it was, back in Ojai.”

“Yes, it is rather curious that you should be involved. Preacher Bob’s radio sermon seems to indicate that Leanna was trying to deliver something to me… do you know what it might be?” Kenji asked, putting down the fig newtons and stand up to adjust the radio dial again.

“No. Well, he did mention something about a silver carriage. The car maybe? Brother, this is crazy conspiracy stuff! How do you even know what this radio preacher is all about?” Rosa said sarcastically.

“When Preacher Bob’s sermon starts sounding like poetry, that’s our cue that he is delivering a message. Do you know much about Shakespear’s poetry? It had a certain rhythm and it ended with a rhyme.” He turned the dial on old radio back and forth, and settled on a country music station. “I listen to the PAB broadcasts as well; they give me an idea what’s shaking down… like how you’re a wanted woman.”

“You know, I’ve never heard about this ‘California Independence Movement’ until today. What is it all about, anyway?” Rosa asked, crossing her legs under the table and squirming a bit in her chair.

“It’s about freedom, of course! The freedom to act, think and look different is fundamental. We should be able to talk about ideas and argue their merits, without censure. It’s about equality, too; no one person is better than the next, and we all have an equal say in how we live our lives. It’s about privacy – it’s none of the government’s business to know how we think or go about our daily affairs,” Kenji said, his eyes unfocussing a bit as he looked at the space above Rosa’s head.

“We have all that, don’t we?” Theo asked, holding his empty glass up to Kenji for a refill.

“We’re told we do, but the President has been slicing away at our freedom, equality and privacy with each of his new programs and laws. His beloved Proud Americans Brigade are only to happy to be his accomplices and chip away at their own individual independence. I think they find comfort and certainty in the President’s promises of security,” Kenji answered, taking Theo’s glass.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Rosa challenged him.

Kenji filled Theo’s glass with more water and handed it to Theo, sitting at the table again. He looked into Rosa’s eyes and said, “A free and democratic society is not ordered and silent. It is noisy and uncertain, filled with ambiguity and argument. It can be unpleasant and inconvenient. It isn’t always easy or obvious. It is a continuous fight to achieve our freedom, equality and privacy.”

Rosa broke her eyes away from Kenji’s, looking skeptically out the window to the bright, hot desert outside of the corrugated metal sheet building. “I don’t know…” she said, her voice trailing off.

Kenji stood up and moved over to Rosa to pull her chair out, saying “I have something to show you that might explain things better for you. I want to show you my rose garden.”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***