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However, next to him, Sean produced a little black-and-red booklet with gray letters across the front and flipped it open.

  “There are no laws of anarchism,” he read out.

  “Correct. Question #2: What is the second law of anarchism?”

  “Never let anyone control you,” said Sean.

  “Right again. Question #3: What is the third law of anarchism?”

  “Shut up and do as we say,” read Sean.

  “Next question. How should you respond to laws?”

  “Always disobey all laws all the time.”

  “Good. Final question: Who is the global, illustrious leader of the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists?”

  “Tribune Alphonse Delroy,” Noel recalled from their encounter with the man.

  “Right again,” the guard said. “Welcome to headquarters. Go get changed into your dress uniforms in the locker room down the hall. Honored Tribune Delroy, his Most Anarchic Majesty, is going to address the troops shortly.”

  The guard extended his right hand, fist closed.

  “Destroy the system and bring down the global elite,” he said, with the monotone of a mantra.

  “Uh, yes, and the same to you,” Sean said, reading quickly through the book for a correct response.

  Then, Noel and Sean started off in the direction of the locker room the guard had indicated. As they went, a column of about a dozen anarchist soldiers in neatly pressed gray-black uniforms marched past them, rifles slung over their shoulders. Noel watched them apprehensively.

  “How did you get that book?” Noel whispered to Sean.

  “I stole it off the guard while he was on his radio,” said Sean.

  “Good thinking,” Noel said.

  “Thinking?” Sean asked with puzzlement as he picked Noel’s pocket.

  “Never mind,” Noel said, rubbing his creased brow. “Look, if we’re going to sneak around the headquarters of the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists, we need to get disguises. Let’s go to the locker room the guard told us about and steal someone’s dress uniforms, then change into them. Otherwise, it would be very dangerous for us to walk the halls here. The Mandatory Organization of Anarchists is as fanatical as they are homicidal, and as homicidal as they are heavily armed. More than anything else they hate corporate fascists.”

  “I hate those guys too,” said Sean.

  Noel hit him.

  “We are corporate fascists, you idiot. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone know that we’re corporate fascists, or we’re dead.”

  “Corporate fascists? Where?” shouted one of the passing soldiers, then unslung his rifle and started to wildly fire bullets into the air.

  Noel and Sean ducked, plugging their ears to deaden the noise.

  “No,” Noel shouted. “We were just saying, uh, how much we hate those corporate fascists and would really like to, uh, grind up their organs into suicide pills.”

  “Oh, okay,” the soldier said, relaxing. His firing had stopped the column. A man with a silvery-black badge on his lapel, apparently an officer, precisely stepped over to the man who had fired into the air.

  “Unauthorized discharged of a firearm in violation of Law of Anarchism 7-62. Demerit! 2nd-rank sub-corporal, you are hereby demoted to 3rd-rank sub-corporal.”

  The man who had fired the weapon hung his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just I hate those corporate fascists so much-”

  “Corporate fascists? Where?” shouted another one of the soldiers and started shooting wildly into the air.

  Sean and Noel, again ducking under the stream of bullets, ran away. With Sean following Noel, and Noel generally going in the direction of where he believed the dressing room to be, they emerged into an atrium. Unlike the rest of the building, the atrium was white and filled with tiles and plants, with a vaulting, glass ceiling. Light flooded in through the ceiling to blindingly illuminate a large marble statue, at least ten feet tall, in the center of the room. It portrayed a woman striking an extremely heroic pose, wearing a bandana with a skull motif on it, and grasping a flag with a huge, blood-splattered A in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other. It looked like her likeness was captured mid-act throwing the incendiary, apparently unaware that she had accidentally set fire to the flag and her bandana in the process. Words chiseled into the base of the statue identified her as Tricia “Firebrand” Moran, First Organizer of the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists.

  A brief plaque beneath her statue described her various exploits. While anarchism has existed at least as long as anarchy has, Tricia was the first to introduce the revolutionary concept of organizing anarchists to make anarchism more effective. She also instituted conscription to increase available manpower and unite all anarchists under one flaming, red banner. Her idea for organizing anarchism first came to her at an anti-government protest where she noticed that anarchist efforts to loot the local buildings and fight the riot police were ineffective because the anarchist mob was disorganized and leaderless. She thereafter founded the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists to force all of the anarchists into one more disciplined bloc. Initially, her efforts were met with skepticism by most professional anarchists, but she won them over with her successful efforts to bring down the system by setting fire to the local grocery store - an effort so wildly decisive and damaging to the powers that be that the government declared itself defeated and fled the city. Thereafter, Tricia won over new converts to anarchism by requiring them to attend lectures about the virtues of anarchism and laying down the laws of anarchy, a code of conduct that anarchism funnily never had before. Largely thanks to her efforts, the Mandatory Organization of Anarchism has grown into the massive, globetrotting, many-tendrilled, anti-elite resistance organization that it is today. Tricia herself died tragically in a coup after the Mandatory Organization’s chief legal counsel conspired with the registrar of procedures and the parliamentarian to promulgate a rule requiring Tricia to stop breathing, and she unfortunately asphyxiated, but not before burning down the lot of them.

  “Wow,” Sean said after he read all this. Then, he tried to prize a marble block out of the statue.

  “Keep moving,” said Noel. “We’re trying to keep a schedule, remember?”

  Reluctantly, Sean consented to take just the one brick, shoved a few plants down his shirt, and followed Noel along the hallway.

  After a few twists and turns, which took them past more patrols of armed guards, they located a well-labelled locker room. It had a pair of armed guards standing outside it, but neither looked attentive. They were slouched, and their weapons were not at the ready. Both had taken off their rigid, gray helmets and set them aside.

  “What are you doing?” Sean asked the men before Noel could stop him.

  “Guarding this locker room against any unauthorized personnel who might attempt to intrude. Why? Who are you?”

  “We’re corporate fascists,” said Sean.

  Noel put him in a headlock and slapped a hand over Sean’s mouth, but neither of the guards looked particularly impressed.

  “Why aren’t you killing us?” Noel asked in considerable confusion.

  “Hey, buddy, we’re on union break,” one of the guards said. “We’ll kill you when we get off.”

  He smoked a cigarette and puffed some of the smoke in Noel’s face.

  Coughing, Noel led Sean into the locker room. It had a suspiciously clean floor, plus a large number of metal, gray lockers. A large poster above one of the lockers portrayed a heroic-looking anarchist in uniform carrying a rifle with the caption, “Be Part Of the Fight Against Large Organizations - Join the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists. Enthusiasm Is Optional, but Joining Is Mandatory.”

  A similar poster next to it read, “Disobeying All Laws is Mandatory!”

  Noel stared at this while Sean discovered a nearby unattended rifle and used the butt of the weapon to hammer open a pair of lockers. Inside were neat uniforms.

  “Great,” Noel said. “Let’s put thes
e on, and then we can start looking for the defective person with less fear of being beheaded.”

  He threw on the anarchist’s gray jacket and dress pants over his existing clothes. Sean pulled the heavy anarchist’s black boots over his socks.

  “Are these steel-toed?” Noel asked with a frown as he did the same. “Also, the arms are starched. These uniforms feel really uncomfortable. Do you still have the net?”

  “Sure do,” Sean said, patting his bag. “Also, look what I found in this locker! Chocolate bars!”

  He started to munch one happily.

  Noel rolled his eyes.

  “We don’t have much time before the end of business hours today. You can stuff your fat, ugly face later. Let’s get a move on.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sean said reluctantly, and stowed the chocolate bars in his bag for later.

  “Better take these rifles too,” Noel said, handing Sean a rifle and taking another for himself.

  Sean lifted the weapon over his head and peered down the barrel with one eye.

  “It’s loaded, you idiot,” Noel said. “Try not to shoot yourself.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” retorted Sean.

  “Actually, I am, and I already saved you from dying of one gunshot wound today. The rifles are just props. Stop fiddling with it.”

  As he spoke, Noel took out his magic wand. At first, it only beeped when Noel pointed it at Sean. Noel snorted, then adjusted a few knobs under a plastic flap on the side, then turned it around the room. In one particular direction, it started to beep wildly.

  “That’s where our defective person is!” said Noel.

  He and Sean rushed out into the hallway past the guards.

  “Hey,” one of the guards exclaimed. “They stole a bunch of stuff!”

  “We’ll get ‘em after break’s over,” said the other guard. “We’re not allowed to do any work during break. Union rules.”

  Noel and Sean fled past them, then, following the magic wand, dashed down a corridor with another poster that read: “The Mandatory Organization of Anarchists - Where Anarchism is Mandatory,” and, “Fight the Power, Destroy the System, Bring Down the State, Dismantle the Institutions, and Don’t Forget to Have Fun!”

  Sean blinked at these before trying to rip them from the wall and stuff them down his shirt. Noel hit him until he stopped trying, and then they rushed on.

  They rounded a corner and entered a giant sort of indoor parade grounds, or a stadium, which was absolutely packed with people. Thousands of uniformed anarchists were standing in neat little lines that extended out towards a center stage, on which there was a podium and several huge banners with large, jagged, red A’s on them. The stage was empty, but the place was otherwise swarming with anarchists. The floor was made of stone. The walls were dark gray. Like the atrium, the ceiling was windowed, allowing in natural light.

  There was a line to advance further into the room.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Noel muttered, and move to cut ahead of the woman in front of him.

  “Hey,” she snapped. “What do you think you’re doing? What kind of anarchist doesn’t respect an orderly queue?”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Noel said. He waited.

  The line slowly disappeared in front of them.

  Ahead, what was causing the line gradually came into view. There was a huge, muscle-bound man with short-cut dark hair and beady, killer’s eyes who was stopping everyone and speaking to them in hushed tones before letting them into the room. He had a menacing shotgun slung over his shoulder. In fact, nearly everyone in the room had some sort of rifle or sword or grenade or machine gun or hand sanitizer or something, but his shotgun looked especially menacing.

  “Halt!” he shouted to Noel as they reached the front of the line. Noel noticed a band on the man’s arm that said, “AARP.”

  “American Association of Retired Persons?” Noel wondered aloud, reading this acronym.

  This was apparently the wrong thing to say, since the shotgun-wielding man’s already narrow eyes shrunk a good millimeter or two. He now looked like he was trying to read a greeting card on the ground from the top of the Eiffel tower, if reading was done down the sights of a firearm.

  “No,” he said. “AARP stands for Anarchist Armed Police. How did you not know that?”

  He looked at Noel suspiciously.

  “I’m, uh, stupid,” Noel said. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m even dumber than he is. And he’s really stupid!”

  He pointed at Sean.

  “Sure am,” Sean said helpfully, and started to whack himself on the top of the head with the butt of his rifle.

  “Hm...” said the anarchist policeman. “I’ve never seen you before. Those are infantry badges. What unit are you with?”

  “We’re with the, uh, 575th-and-a-half anarchist regiment,” Noel rapidly ad-libbed.

  “Ah, yes, the good old five-seven-five-point-five, Chaos Spear brigade,” said the policeman. “They helped me out of a few tight spots back during the ice cream parlor skirmishes. Tell me, how’s Colonel Headstrong doing?”

  “Uh... dead,” Noel improvised wildly. “Those goddamn corporate government fascist, uh, sheep-brained, big money, ivory tower, institutional, system-loving, law-kissing, Davos, uh, elite, uh, alligators got him. Threw a radioactive, er, taco at him.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” the policeman said, shaking his head. “Still, I somehow always knew that was how he’d go out. It’s funny, but I think he wanted it that way. You’re free to go. I mean that metaphorically, of course. You have to stand in line and not say anything or we’ll kill you.”

  “Of course,” Noel said, then entered the room. Since everyone else in the room was facing rigidly forward, Sean immediately started picking the pockets of the people in the back row almost completely unopposed. Noel produced his magic wand. It beeped in the direction of the stage, but there were so many people in the room, it was hard to tell who it was indicating.

  “We’ll have to get closer to the source,” Noel hissed to Sean, dragging him away from the wallets of the rear line of anarchists. They started to navigate along the sides of the long, orderly columns of heavily armed anarchists. The magic wand’s beeping kept guiding them forward, getting faster and louder as they went. Noel turned down the volume and began to consult it covertly. Eventually, they reached the front of the room. Noel brandished his detector at the stage, but it still beeped aggressively.

  “Whoever the defective person is must still be behind the stage,” said Noel.

  A porter in a gray uniform and hat suddenly approached them.

  “Stand here,” she said, indicating chalk marks on the floor. “You don’t want to be out of formation for the leader’s big speech, do you?”

  “Of course!” Noel hissed to Sean as they advanced to the chalk marks. “The leader! Tribune Alphonse Delroy must be the defective person! I’ve got a plan. When he comes out on stage, you’ll net him.”

  Sean saw a flaw in this plan.

  “When they see me trying to kidnap their leader, won’t all these anarchists behind me shoot me?” he asked.

  “Yes, but as long as they don’t shoot me, we’ll be alright,” said Noel reassuringly. “Shh. I think he’s coming out onto the stage!”

  A swarthy gunman with slick dark hair and dark eyes, in a uniform, and carrying a rifle over his shoulder walked onto the stage followed by several similarly attired persons who were presumably subordinates. One such subordinate walked forward and adjusted a waiting microphone stand.

  “I am Second Anarchist First Organizer Guy Meyer,” said the subordinate. “It is my great pleasure and mandatory duty to introduce his Grand Leaderness, the Political Rejectionist, the Reigning Anarchintate, the Molotov Cocktail-Maker, the Supreme Nihilist, and the People’s Demagogue, Tribune Alphonse Delroy! Clap as he approaches, then stop once he holds up his hand for silence.”

  Everyone applauded thunderously as the People’s Demagogue approached the microphone. He started
to wave magnanimously, and the crowd quieted down.

  “Let us begin this meeting with the anarchist’s salute,” said Delroy, his crisp voice booming thunderously across the crowd. “Follow my instructions! Begin by curling your right hand into a fist, then place it over your heart.”

  Everyone did this, including Sean and Noel. Sean frowned as he did this.

  “Now, extend your right arm out away from your heart,” said Delroy. “Now, open your hand and put your fingers together.”

  “Wait...” Sean said as he did this, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “My fellow anarchists,” continued Delroy. “The hour of our final triumph is upon us! Today, we march against the fascists and destroy them! Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, leader,” the entire crowd of anarchists said in the same dull monotone, all of them still doing the salute.

  “You know why?” Delroy continued, his tone lapsing into informality. “Because we are the people who reject authority. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, leader,” the entire crowd repeated in the same monotone.

  Delroy’s voice took on the tone of a rant. He removed his microphone from the stand and started to pace back and forth across the stage.

  “And no one tells us what to do!” Delroy continued, making aggressive pumping actions with his fist. “We’re the guys who disobey all instructions all the time!”

  He paused. There was a silence.

  “Answer me!” he shouted.

  “Yes, leader.”

  “And we’re not sheep! We’re the ones who think for ourselves!”

  “Yes, leader.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” continued Delroy, walking back and forth at an increasingly frenzied pace. “We’re gonna bring down the government! We’re gonna fight the power and smash the system! Because organizations, like the companies, and the Congress, and the media, are all completely corrupt. I know because I saw it on my solid gold TV in the mansion I bought with the organization’s money.”

  “Yes, leader,” chorused everyone.

  “You weren’t supposed to talk that time!” Delroy said, red-faced. “Don’t say anything until I tell you to, unless I want you to without saying it, goddamnit! Anyway, what was I saying? Right. The schools, and the universities, and the libraries, and the churches, and the media - they’re all filling our heads with lies. They want to turn us into sheep, but we’re not going to be sheep, or zombies, or corporate wage slaves that they kick around, because we’re rebels, right? We tear down authority. We’re constantly destroying the closest authority figures we can find.”