UnSouled (10 page)

As for the gates, they didn’t go up until after the Unwind Accord. Like other tribes, the Arápache refused to accept the legality of unwinding—just as they had refused to be a part of the Heartland War. “Swiss Cheese Natives,” detractors of the time had called them, for the ChanceFolk lands were holes of neutrality in the midst of a battling nation.

So the rest of the country, and much of the world, took to recycling the kids it didn’t want or need, and the Arápache Nation, along with all the rest of the American Tribal Congress, proclaimed, if not their independence, then their recalcitrance. They would not follow the law of the land as it stood, and if pressed, the entire Tribal Congress would secede from the union, truly making Swiss cheese of the United States. With one costly civil war just ending, Washington was wise to just let it be.

Of course, court battles have been raging for years as to whether or not the Arápache Nation has the right to demand passports to enter their territory, but the tribe has become very adept at doing the legal dance. The sentry doubts the issue will ever be resolved. At least not in his lifetime.

He processes car after car beneath an overcast sky that threatens rain but holds its water like an obstinate child. Some people get through; others get turned away.

And then he gets a car of AWOLs.

He can spot AWOLs the second they pull up. Their desperation wafts out at him like a musk. Although no tribe supports unwinding, the Arápache is one of the few that gives sanctuary to AWOL Unwinds, to the constant consternation of the Juvenile Authority. It’s not something they advertise or openly admit, but word gets around, so dealing with AWOLs is just another part of his day.

“Can I help you?” he asks the teenage driver.

“My friend is injured,” he says. “He needs medical attention.”

The sentry looks in the backseat, where a kid in poor shape rests his head in the lap of a girl in her early twenties who looks a little bit off. The kid in back doesn’t appear to be faking it.

“Best if you turn around,” the sentry tells him. “There’s a hospital in Cañon City—it’s much closer than the reservation’s medical lodge. I’ll give you directions if you like.”

“We can’t,” says the driver. “We need sanctuary. Asylum. Do you understand?”

So he was right after all. They’re AWOLs. The sentry scans the line of cars waiting to get through the bottleneck. One of the other guards looks at him to see what he’ll do. Their policy is very clear, and he must set an example for his coworkers. Being a rez sentry is not noble.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“See?” says the girl in the back. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

But the kid driving won’t be deterred. “I thought you take in AWOLs.”

“AWOLs must be sponsored before we can let them in.”

The kid can’t hold in his frustration. “Sponsored? Are you serious? How would AWOL Unwinds get sponsored?”

The sentry sighs. Does he really have to spell it out? “You have to have a sponsor to enter
officially
,” he says. “But if you can find your way in
unofficially
, chances are you’ll find someone to sponsor you.” Only now does the sentry notice something familiar about his face, but he can’t place where he’s seen him before.

“We don’t have time for that! Do you think he’s going to climb a fence?” The driver indicates the semiconscious kid in the back, who, come to think of it, also looks familiar. Considering that kid’s sorry state, the sentry considers stepping forward to sponsor them himself, but he knows it will cost him his job. He’s paid to keep people out, not find ways to let them in. Compassion is not part of his job description.

“I’m sorry, but—”

And then the injured kid speaks up, as if out of a dream. “Friend of Elina Tashi’ne,” he mumbles.

That surprises the sentry. “The medicine woman?” There are many thousands on the rez, but there are those whose reputation is well known. The Tashi’ne family is very highly regarded—and everyone knows about the terrible tragedy they endured. Cars in line begin to honk, but he ignores them. This has gotten interesting.

The kid driving looks back at his delirious friend, as if this is a surprise to him as well.

“Call her,” the injured kid says; then his eyes flutter closed.

“You heard him!” says the driver. “Call her!”

The sentry calls the medical lodge and is quickly transferred to Dr. Elina. “Sorry to bother you,” he tells her, “but there are some kids here at the east gate, and one of them claims to know you.” He turns to the kid in the back, but he’s gone unconscious, so he asks the driver, “What’s his name?”

The driver hesitates, then finally says, “Lev Garrity. But she probably knows him as Lev Calder.”

The sentry does a double take. All at once he recognizes Lev, and the driver, too. He’s that kid they call the Akron AWOL. Connor something-or-other. The one who’s supposed to be dead. As for Lev, he was infamous on the rez before he became “the clapper who wouldn’t clap.” You can’t speak the name of poor Wil Tashi’ne without also thinking of Lev Calder and his involvement in that tragedy. And his friends here probably don’t even know. He imagines Lev wouldn’t talk much about what happened that awful day.

The sentry tries to hide his shock, but he doesn’t do a good job of it. Connor registers mild disgust. “Just tell her, okay?”

“Brace yourself,” he says into the phone. “It’s Lev Calder. And he’s injured.”

A long pause. The honking cars continue to build into a dissonant chorus. Finally Dr. Elina says, “Send him in.”

He hangs up the phone and turns to Connor. “Congratulations,” he says, feeling just the slightest bit noble. “You’ve got yourselves a sponsor.”

Part Two

Fine Young Specimens

GLOBAL ORGAN HARVESTING A BOOMING BLACK MARKET BUSINESS; A KIDNEY HARVESTED EVERY HOUR

By J. D. Heyes

NaturalNews / Sunday, June 3, 2012

In this age of instant, mass communication, it’s hard to cover up virtually anything, and yet there’s one story that has yet to be told on a wide scale—how organ trafficking has ballooned into a global business and that the practice is so widespread, one organ is sold every hour.

That’s according to the World Health Organization, which said recently in a report that there are new fears the illegal organ trade may once again be rising . . . .

Kidneys are in high demand

The World Health Organization says wealthy patients in developed nations are paying tens of thousands of dollars for a kidney to India-, China-, and Pakistan-based gangs, who harvest them from desperate people for as little as a few hundred dollars.

Eastern Europe, the U.N.–based health organization says, is becoming fertile ground for black-market organs; recently the Salvation Army said it rescued a woman who had been brought to the United Kingdom to have her organs harvested.

The illicit kidney trade makes up 75 percent of the black-market organ trade . . . experts say that is likely due to the diseases of affluence such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems.

And, since there is such disparity between wealthy and poor countries, there isn’t much chance the illicit trade will end anytime soon.

The full article can be found at:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036052_organ_harvesting_kidneys_black_market.html

The Rheinschilds

It’s begun. The newly established Juvenile Authority, as its first official act, has announced its first unwinding facility. Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, in Chicago, the largest facility for juvenile incarceration in the country, is to be retrofitted with three operating rooms and a thirty-three member surgical staff.

Janson Rheinschild reads the article in his research office, nestled in a building named for him and his wife on the campus of Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University. The article about the unwinding center is small and buried so deep in the newsfeed, no one who’s not looking for it will find it.

Unwinding creeps in on the hushed feet of angels.

There is no call from Proactive Citizenry to gloat. They have dismissed him and Sonia as irrelevant. He looks to the gold medallion across the room sitting in a clear glass display case. What does a Nobel Prize in science mean when your lifesaving work has been transformed into an excuse to end life?

“But life doesn’t end,” the smiling proponents of unwinding all insist. “It just transforms. We like to call it ‘living in a divided state.’ ”

As he prepares to leave his office, on sudden impulse he punches the display case and the glass shatters. Then he stands there feeling stupid for what he’s done. The medallion lies amid the shards, knocked off its base. He rescues it, shoving it into his jacket pocket.

•   •   •

As he pulls up his driveway, he sees that the pickup is gone. Sonia is at it again. Garage sales and flea markets, which means it must be Saturday. Janson has lost track of the days. Sonia drowns her disillusionment by hunting for knickknacks and old furniture that they don’t need. She hasn’t been to her own research offices for weeks. It’s as if she’s given up on medical science completely and has retired at forty-one.

The front door is unlocked—careless of her to leave it that way. But a moment later, as he crosses from the foyer into the living room, he learns in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t her doing. He’s hit in the head with one of his wife’s heavier knickknacks and falls to the ground. Dazed, but still conscious, he looks up to see the face of his attacker.

It’s just a kid of maybe sixteen. One of the “ferals” the news and neighbors keep complaining about. The lawless, vicious by-product of modern civilization. He’s gangly and malnourished, with an anger in his eyes that was only partially relieved by smashing a stranger in the head.

“Where’s the money?” he demands. “Where’s the safe?”

Even in pain, Janson can almost laugh. “There is no safe.”

“Don’t lie to me! A house like this always has a safe!”

He marvels at how the boy can be so dangerous and so naive at once. But then again, ignorance and blind cruelty have been known to go hand in hand. On a dark whim, Rheinschild reaches into his coat pocket and tosses the kid his medal.

“Take it. It’s gold,” he says. “I have no use for it anymore.”

The kid catches the medal in a hand that’s missing two fingers. “You’re lying. This ain’t gold.”

“Fine,” says Rheinschild. “So kill me.”

The kid turns the medallion over in his hands a few times. “The Nobel Prize? I don’t think so. It’s fake.”

“Fine,” says Rheinschild again. “So kill me.”

“Shut up! I didn’t say anything about killing you, did I?” The teen hefts it, feeling its weight. Rheinschild pulls himself up to a sitting position, still feeling his head spin from the blow. He may have a concussion. He doesn’t care.

The kid then looks around the living room, which is filled with awards and citations that Janson and Sonia received for their groundbreaking work. “If this is real, whad’ya win it for?”

“We invented unwinding,” Rheinschild says. “Although we didn’t know it at the time.”

The kid lets loose a bitter, disbelieving guffaw. “Yeah, right.”

The young burglar could leave with his prize, but he doesn’t. Instead he lingers. So Rheinschild asks, “What happened to your fingers?”

The kid’s distrustful gaze notches toward anger again. “Why is that your business?”

“Was it frostbite?”

His attacker is taken aback, surprised by Rheinschild’s guess. “Yeah, it was. Most people think it was fireworks or something stupid like that. But it was frostbite last winter.”

Rheinschild pulls himself up into a chair.

“Who said you could move?” But they both know the kid’s posturing is now all for show.

Rheinschild takes a good look at him. It appears he hasn’t been introduced to a shower in this lifetime. Rheinschild can’t even tell the color of his hair. “What is it that you need?” Rheinschild asks him.

“Your money,” he says, looking down his nose at him.

“I didn’t ask you what you want. I asked you what you need.”

“Your money!” he says again, a little more forcefully. Then he adds a bit more gently: “And food. And clothes. And a job.”

“What if I gave you one of the three?”

“What if I bashed your head in a little deeper than I already did?”

Rheinschild reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, intentionally revealing that there are a few bills in there, but instead of the bills he tosses the boy his business card.

“Come to that address at ten on Monday. I’ll put you to work and pay you a livable wage. If you want to buy food and clothes with it, that’s fine with me. If you want to squander it, that’s fine with me too. Just as long as you show up every day, five days a week. And you take a shower before you do.”

The kid sneers at him. “And you’ll have the Juvey-cops waiting there for me. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“There’s not enough empirical evidence to make that judgment.”

The kid shifts his weight from one foot to another. “So what kind of work is it?”

“Biological. Medical. I’m working on something that could end unwinding, but I need a research assistant. Someone who isn’t secretly on Proactive Citizenry’s payroll.”

“Proactive Who?”