It was that effort that Bobbie Gould-Walker was thinking of at her older brother’s funeral. Of the Gould family, she was the only one to not speak to her brother since he joined the ISSP. It wasn’t for lack of trying. At first, Gett would call twice a week to just talk. Then twice a month. Then, only on occasion. Bobbie had meant to pick up the phone whenever he would call. At first, she didn’t because she was too busy or too angry with her brother. Even when she learned of the nature of his workings with the ISSP, she wouldn’t answer the phone. She had inherited her mother’s stubbornness along with her eyes.
It was at the funeral that Bobbie learned of why Gett had died. It seemed that he was working undercover with the Space Warriors, an organization that Bobbie felt sympathy for when she was younger. But, as time went on, she saw their methods as being rather unethical. Not so much the terrorism, she was well aware of the value of a good show of force, but rather the targets. They wouldn’t go after, say billionaires who profited over the selling of Sea Rats or the corporations who harvested the seas of Ganymede for Sea Rats like a wolf harvests organs from a rabbit. Instead, they’d shoot up various restaurants that served Sea Rat and target the customers. Their final leader, Twinkle Murdoch, was rich enough to know the right people to target.
Learning this gave Bobbie a little respect for her brother. Not much, all things considered, but enough to not slink away from the funeral as the mass reached its middle. It was a rather small ceremony. Gett’s family wasn’t that big even before they started to die, as all families do. His mother, Jane Gould, had died three years earlier of cancer while on the picket line fighting for the Martian Union of Sex Workers. She kept saying she’d go to the doctor when the protest was done, but something always took precedent. Flick, the middle child, was sitting in the corner with his wife, husband, and three kids (a boy, a girl, and a non-binary child). They had met at a protest over the Titan War and had grown quite fond of each other. Robert, the Gould patriarch (if such a word has meaning in the Gould family), was up on the pedestal talking about how much he loved his son. Their last conversation was an argument over the nature of protest. Gett believed that peaceful protests were the correct pathway while his father argued that such measures aren’t good enough compared to the tactics of the enemy. Bobbie would often flip flop between these two extremes.
Bobbie was at once surprised and unsurprised by the lack of ISSP at the funeral. She was aware of her brother’s subversive activities at the ISSP, but not so much the extent of their knowledge. She had assumed that her brother was good enough not to be noticed. Evidentially, he was only good enough not to get caught. Of the presumably ISSP people in the church, Bobbie saw an older man with a scar on his left chin, a woman with a perpetually sad look on her face, and some punk kid who probably joined just so he could punch poor people in the face. Aside from family and priests, these were the only people in the church. She was sure the older man was a chief of some kind, probably there to show appearances. The kid was most likely there to piss of Gett’s grave (Bobbie made a mental note to kick him in the balls if he tried).
But it was the woman that confounded Bobbie. She didn’t have the face of a cop, not even the eyes of one. She was too hardened to be a civilian. But it was what she said at the podium, in that stunningly miserable blue dress that really peaked Bobbie’s interest.
“I met Gett at a protest. I don’t remember what it was for. I was nine years old and he was twelve. All I remember is the violence and Gett. He had this air to him, like the world couldn’t ever break him. Like he was going to live forever and make the world a better place. He did at least one of those things.” She a soft smile on her face when she said that last line, like one has when talking about the dark clouds on a happy memory. Bobbie didn’t listen to the rest of the speech. She was too preoccupied by the memory. She was only eight at the time, but she remembers (or, at least, is willing to say she remembers) what that protest was for.
It was the last protest of the Universal Environmental Protection Society. They were furious over an oil rig run by at least three of the corporations on Ganymede that was killing the Sea Rats. Her mother, one of the founding members of the Society, was having an argument with one of their financial backers, an extremist named Murdoch, who wanted more to be done. Jane, with her quick wit and quicker mouth, asked bluntly what should be done, kill all the workers. Murdoch liked that idea quite a bit.
The ensuing chaos as Murdoch and her “family” started killing those they deemed enemies of the Sea Rat (including members of the society) was a horrifying experience that was forever etched on the Gould family. Bobbie saw men and women have their faces ripped off by gun fire, leaving only a cruel approximation of what lies beneath the human flesh. Flick spent the remainder of his adolescence bouncing between bars and protests until he found love. Jane resolved to fight not just for the lives of the animals trampled upon by capitalism and greed, but for all the dispossessed. She resolved not to make the same mistake she did with the Society, and never again put the money people in a position of power within the groups she worked with, much to the chagrin of many a backer. Robert was the only member of the Gould family not to be at that protest, and never saw the cruelty of the rich and powerful applied with the arm of the just.
Gett never talked about what happened that day. Bobbie, even when she was furious with him, always wondered why he joined the ISSP. Why he took a government job as opposed to simply hacking into their networks to dig up dirt on them like a lot of activists do. Instead, he joined up with the fascists. At first, and even a bit up until his funeral, she thought he had been radicalized into joining up with a corrupt and cruel government that sought to subvert everything she stood for. Even when she learned of his more subversive activities, a part of her (a very cruelly cynical part) believed it to be a con to lull them into a false sense of security. It wasn’t until she saw the woman on stage that she came up with a different theory.
The girl was one of their fellow protesters. Her name was Juniper Pond. She was close to both Bobbie and Gett. She was her best friend, her first love, and Bobbie thought she died that day. The bullets flew over the sky like meteors on a distant moon. Fast, deadly, and unstoppable. There was shouting and anger and pointless violence and cruelty that day. The police assumed everyone involved was a terrorist out to kill the innocent workers doing a job. So the police used this as an excuse to do what they wanted to do since they heard of the Universal Environmental Protection Society.
Juniper wasn’t in a cell that day. Neither was Gett, but hindsight made Bobbie believe he sold them out to get a job as a cop. No one could have escaped that bloodbath without selling out. And Bobbie was sure Juniper would never sell them out. But that’s what you do when you’re young and in love: assume the worst possible thing made them go away. It was shortly after the body had been laid to rest that Bobbie and Juniper had gotten a chance to talk. Juniper didn’t want to talk to Bobbie. There was a coldness in her eyes when Bobbie tried to start up a conversation, one that was, perhaps given her presence at Gett’s funeral, to be expected. It wasn’t until, after getting a smoke, Juniper saw Bobbie kick some punk kid in the balls that she decided it would be nice to talk to her old friend.
It wasn’t after the post-funeral get together, of course. She didn’t want the ISSP hearing what she had to say. They decided to go out for a cup of coffee a few days later. There was a nice little shop a few blocks from where Gett lived on Mars. It was decent coffee, if a bit watered down. They didn’t talk much about Gett at first. Bobbie wanted to know what happened that awful day when they were kids. Juniper explained that she needed to go to the bathroom that day. Gett volunteered to guide her to the bathroom while the adults argued about whether the purpose of revolution was to change the world or cull the chaff. When the people arguing the latter decided to demonstrate their views, Juniper had just left the bathroom. Gett was there to guide her out of the madness. It hard to escape the maze of an oil platform, especially with an uncivil war on one side and a cruel and unjust law on the other.
They were lucky that the platform was, to some extent, in disrepair such that there was a gaping hole near the bottom of it. They were also lucky to be picked up by a passing fishing boat. These were stories untold at the funeral. Ones that, were the ISSP to hear, would end up with Juniper going to jail for terrorism. Bobbie talked about her life for a bit, mainly her anger and frustration at the world. How it chewed up good people and, at best, corrupted them into cruel, vicious bastards. Juniper objected to the implications of that statement, claiming that Gett had good reasons for joining the ISSP. Bobbie flat out asked what they were.
Juniper was silent.
Perhaps a bit too long, as Bobbie prepared to leave. But Juniper grabbed her by the arm like a drowning man. The look in her eyes was not that of a quisling defending capitulation or a fox pleading to be let out of the trap so she could eat the lambs. It was that of a girl who had seen horror far too young. It was like looking at a mirror into a life that could have been. And then Juniper told her why her brother joined the ISSP. He thought that he could change the system from within. He bought into a lie about the police, about the government. But he caught on quickly to the lie, but not quick enough to escape. So he did his best to mitigate the damage. Plus, the paycheck was enough to keep them from starving on the streets.
Bobbie wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Her brother was dead and all that was left was a crying woman in a coffee shop. Bobbie moved her hand while she sat down. A wistful smile was on her face. It reminded Juniper of the first day they met. It was a cold summer evening on the fields of Mars. They were playing Hide and Seek while their parents plotted to change the world. Juniper was it. Flick and Gett were easy enough to find. It took her an hour to find Bobbie, hiding beneath the tree with the face of a man on it. When Bobbie bolted out from under the tree and failed to escape Juniper, she kissed her best friend on the cheek. A wistful smile grew on her face as the little girl ran home to bed. Juniper followed her into the dark.
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