Of course, right around then, Alex Lamarque just had to show up and point that plasma gun at Pru’s head.
* * *
The Eagle: Official News Feed of New Columbia Preparatory Academy
“Third-Year Student Anabel Park Talks Partition War Legacies, Famous Surnames, and Her Latest, Greatest Stunt”
by Joseph Glazer
Brigadier General Cornelius Park had the sort of household name usually uttered in one breath with buzzwords like “conqueror,” “maverick,” and, of course, “partition.” A controversial hero of the Partition Wars, Park is often credited with the bloody, revolutionary birth of our modern-day Barricade Coalition. A career strategist and soldier, Park’s name first picked up notoriety by association with another famous name: Gabriel Lamarque. Most historians agree that the tide of the Partition Wars first turned when Park—on behalf of the young Lamarque, already a resistance leader in the making—masterminded a brutal series of military upsets over Incorporated forces in both the Midlands and Northern Front, with the aid of Gabriel’s younger brother, Etienne Lamarque.
These days, nearly five years after his passing, the military mastermind has a new claim to fame: his notorious brood of clever, ambitious grandchildren. Tonight, the Eagle trades questions and answers with the Brigadier General’s youngest, and perhaps cleverest, descendant—none other than New Columbia’s own precocious prep schooler Anabel Park.
Let’s cut to the chase. Is it true that you were responsible for illicitly streaming Alex Lamarque’s guerilla concert from the New Columbia Prep auditorium on a UCC-owned propaganda channel?
[laughs] Wow, even student reporters don’t beat around the bush, do you?
As in all things, New Columbia Prep students strive to be the best. Besides, we’re grateful to your grandpa for carving out places on this continent where journalism can still exist!
Touché. You should know my answer to your first question, then. Yes, I organized the broadcast. But technically, I did not violate UCC law. Hacking firewalls and distributing illicit media is illegal, sure, but that’s not what I did—I streamed Alex’s performance live, on the wireless. If there happened to be a faulty firewall, which happened to leak the performance onto that unfortunately poorly secured Incorporated propaganda channel, well. That’s not my fault. Diplomatic agreements between the UCC and the Barricade Coalition are for diplomats to manage, not schoolgirls.
Right. You were just cruising for an A on a school project.
In our defense, it was a final project for a class literally called “Modern Politics.”
So you wanted to make a statement against UCC censorship?
Yes and no. I mean, politics are fundamentally about power. UCC Inc. rose to power on this very simple idea that the media we consume—music, books, news, whatever—shape our thoughts, which in turn shape our culture. When you get two distinct, opposing ideas of what culture should be, you get the Partition Wars. Patriotism stopped being about standing by a country, and started being about standing by a tribe of people who believe the same things you do, which was why national governments ultimately failed. Now, the UCC hangs on to its power over the rest of the continent with this seamless blend of censorship and executive-sponsored propaganda—a kind of thought control, if you will.
Do you see this as a step toward filling your grandfather’s shoes some day?
God, I hope not! My grandfather fought a literal war just to keep free thinking alive. I came up with an edgy idea for a school project to remind people what that war was about—so that, hopefully, they’ll stop the next one from happening at all. Grandpa always said the most successful wars are the ones you end before they begin.
Why did you pick the songs you did? We noticed a good mix of languages in the set list!
The songs were mostly Alex’s picks, actually—we wanted to showcase a lot of foreign-language music, since standard continental English is so strictly enforced as the only permissible language in Incorporated territory. Which is pretty dumb, considering how much of the continent’s heritage is Spanish and French as well—and that’s not even getting into smaller pockets of immigrant languages like Korean, which my grandfather spoke! Or Arabic, or Chinese, or whatever. The Lamarques are from the French bit of the Northern Front, so Alex grew up on their rebel songs, and his mum was Southwestern, so he has the Spanish know-how too. I think the whole thing came together really nicely.
What was it like working with Alex Lamarque? He’s got a lovely voice, and great stage presence, but we’d never know it from how reclusive he usually is!
Yeah, Alex is careful with how he uses his platform, but he doesn’t do anything by halves. I think we approached the project with a similar mindset. We both carry the weight of the war behind our family names, so he definitely understands that when we pull a risky stunt like this concert, it’s bigger than just us, you know? Like, we get that we’re basically branding this controversial performance as a “Park” thing, or a “Lamarque” thing, not just a “two kids named Alex and Anabel having a laugh” sort of thing. It’s really important to be on the same wavelength with that stuff.
Okay, last question. How long before we can expect an illicit leak of this interview into Incorporated territory?
[laughs] Hey, if Incorporated citizens want a peek into the lives of Coalition prep schoolers, I’m pretty sure book smugglers have you covered on that front, no matter how much finger-wagging Emilia Rosenbaum does over at the Barricader’s Daily. Sorry, Emilia! We don’t control the will of the people!
* * *
“THAT’S YOUR STORY?”
“That’s the truth,” snapped Pru. Getting a read on Alex was practically impossible. He’d listened to her spill her guts without interrupting once, not even at the bits about how the cyborg-dragon-thing rescued Pru from certain death in an elevator shaft, or about the temporary amnesia that ensued. He’d simply watched her with that inscrutably dark gaze, one ankle crossed over a knee as he leaned against the table. The plasma gun sat with disturbingly casual ease at his hip. What kind of prep schooler handled plasma guns, much less used them to interrogate near strangers in coffeehouses?
The same kind that performed illicitly streamed concerts from school auditoriums onto Incorporated propaganda channels to make reckless political statements, apparently.
“Hey!” Pru called over Alex’s shoulder. “Barista guy—girl—um, barista person! Aren’t you going to do anything about the crazy dude threatening your only customer with a plasma gun at point-blank?”
Slowly, the barista raised those mismatched eyes from the till, and turned the most disdainful expression yet on Pru. “No.” A pause. “And it’s barista girl, if you must. For the time being.”