Episode 2
Tags: Muslim, 2016 Election, Serial Fiction, Fiction, Donald Trump

BUDDY K

Buddy, as most friends had called him as far back as high school in Pakistan, was an engineer’s engineer. Any of the bosses he had worked for would tell you that. After a bachelors’ from Wisconsin-Madison, he had worked in a series of technical roles in Silicon Valley and was now programming lead for a medium-sized company, much more comfortable as an “individual contributor than managing.

This morning, as he logged in at his workstation in the office, Buddy’s mind was still thinking of one of the most interesting people he had spent time with in a while. The fact that he had met her at work was unusual thereabouts, even more so than her being from India and his being Pakistani. Buddy’s socialization was often eclectic.

The evening had been a very interesting convergnce of the intellectual and romantic; sensual, really.

“Mandatory Gathering Conference B” the subject line said. Unusual. Buddy had an odd feeling even as he opened the email. It was from the COO, but that kind of bureaucratese was not really Ray’s style. And the email itself was very brief, almost cryptic, giving virtually no new information beyond what the subject line said.

Conference B was what was known as “The Fish Bowl” at Semi Con Inc., in the front of the building, where people in the lobby could see what transpired, having to look up at what were usually the more formal meetings, with men in suits and from where visitors got a view of the attractive manicured lawns outside, the well-appointed lobby with its wall full of plaques displaying patents and awards — but little else. Pretty common was a feature of office buildings, but still impressive.

For some reason, the first thing Buddy noticed as he walked in were the two gentlemen sporting a black suit, sunglasses and an earpiece, standing next to a door on one side of the conference room. Buddy had hardly ever noticed the door before that. For a moment he entertained the thought that some dignitary was going to address them — one that needed protecting by men with sunglasses and earpieces.

“Ahem.” It was the Director of Human Resources. And standing next to him were several more gentlemen kitted out — the word bubbled up into Buddy’s consciousness from his cricketing days back home — like the gentlemen standing by the side door that Buddy now remembered led to a staircase leading directly out of the building.

Buddy’s mind went back to the Great Dot Com Crash when he and not a few friends sat through a meeting with the same kind of vibe, but which started with the announcement of a layoff, followed by a variation of the words “If you’re in this room, you are safe.” Before that, he’d thought that kind of thing was a myth. Security or an HR person accompanied people back to their desks to watch them pack and then escorted them out of the building.

But the men in suits seemed a bit much for that kind of situation.

“So this should be interesting,” he thought.

“This morning, we received some instructions from the Department of Homeland Security that are aimed at helping us keep the Homeland safe. The measures require the cooperation of certain sections of the citizenry while our representatives figure things out…”

“That’s a familiar turn of phrase,” thought Buddy, as it started to dawn on him that the people on that side of the room seemed to be a group. He remembered faces from evenings spent sharing ethnic food to break the Ramazan fast six or seven months previous. He wasn’t a regular, but the one time he remembered included a discussion of a tweet from the Republican candidate for President…but the gathering was somehow smaller this time — there were faces he didn’t see at Iftar, while other faces were missing.

“Naturalized citizens from the following countries between the ages of 14 and 59 are being required to come into DHS camps so that they can be in protective custody for the duration of this process of reevaluation.:

“…and THAT is a familiar list, for sure,” thought Buddy, recognizing what seemed like the list of countries whose immigrant, or “non-immigrant”, contributors to the American melting pot had been asked to come in for “Special Registration” under the last Republican President.

…continued in Episode 3…