Johnny (Part Two)

Johnny got off of the transport shuttle outside of his family home. He had somehow expected it to look different to him, but it was exactly the same as it was when he had left six months earlier. It was a large, two story, late twenty first century house with a big porch. He climbed the stairs and stood on that porch awash with thousands of childhood memories before ringing the door chime. He hadn't told his family when he was coming home because he had wanted to surprise them. It was December twentieth, the anniversary of Joshua Lewis's famous speech and the Enlightened Society's biggest holiday and he knew that there would probably be a few family members there to greet him, but he wasn't expecting Joshua to answer the door. He lived about thirty miles away on the other side of town and according to his mother's communications he hadn't been to the Cramblit home much since moving back to Capitol City.
"Johnny!" Joshua said. "I didn't know you were coming home!"
"Hey, Josh," Johnny said. He embraced his elder brother and then came into the house.
"I see that the academy didn't do too much for that belly of yours!" Joshua laughed, patting Johnny on his rather ample gut. Johnny was in pretty good shape for a man his size, but he was very overweight. It had been a concern during his training, but he had surpassed all expectations and had proven to his instructors that his big belly was not going to hinder his promising career in the least.
"Shut up, Josh," he said. "What you are referring to is my greatest weapon! Remember how I used to beat you up all the time?"
"You never beat me up," Josh said, "you just sat on me until I couldn't breathe anymore."
"Exactly." Johnny looked closely at his brother, remembering again the respect and admiration he had for the older man. He had had a good childhood, and most of the best memories of that childhood involved Joshua Cramblit. Now, they were both men in respectable positions in the community with nothing but a bright future before them. It was hard to believe that the boy who once held him down and shaved his eyebrows on a dare was now a doctor, and the boy whose eyebrows had taken two months to grow back a police officer.
Johnny noticed something else about his brother. He looked happy for the first time since Johnny could remember. The brothers knew each other better than anybody, and Johnny knew that even though Joshua hid it well behind a friendly personality and a broad and convincing smile, he was not a particularly happy person. Johnny had never said anything about it, though. He allowed his brother to put on the charade, always wondering what Joshua believed was missing from his life that would make him happy. The Cramblits were well off, well adjusted, and powerful people in the Enlightened Society. The children had never been neglected or abused. They had had everything they needed and most of what they wanted. Joshua was popular, good looking, successful with women, and still none of it seemed to satisfy him.
Now, Johnny looked at him and saw a man who seemed happy. Perhaps getting his medical degree and establishing a practice had finally given Joshua Cramblit what he thought he needed. He had always wanted to help people. But maybe it was something else. He would have to ask him about it later, though, because now the house's front room was being filled with family members and a few friends who had heard him come in and were racing in to greet him.
"Johnny!" It was his mother. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tightly. "Let me look at you, boy! You look so good in that uniform!"
"I'm surprised they found one that fit," his little brother Steve said from the stairs. Fourteen year old Steve wasn't much thinner, but he was known within and without the family for his often mean spirited sense of humor.
"Stop it, Steve," Mrs. Cramblit said. "You would do well to follow your bother's example. Either one of them."
"No thanks, Mom," Steve said. "You don't have to go to college or an academy to be a musician."
"But you do need talent," Johnny shot back, making the dozen people in the room laugh. Johnny sniffed the air. "Is that turkey?"
"Dinner's almost ready," Mrs. Cramblit said. "I suppose we could find enough in the kitchen for one more plate."
"Good luck with that, Mom," Steve said, racing towards the dining room.
"Things haven't changed much around here," Johnny laughed.
Johnny sat at the dining room table between his two brothers and across from his sixteen year old sister Kelly. His father sat at the head of the table and his mother sat on his left. His uncle Howard sat between his wife Anne and their son Harold, who was almost twelve. His father's best friend Peter Neason had also come over for the holiday dinner with his wife Sarah and their seventeen year old daughter Aimee, who Johnny had always thought was both very pretty and very out of his reach. The last person at the table was Johnny's grandmother, simply known as Nanny. She was over eighty years old, growing slightly senile, and very outspoken about a lot of things. Her age protected her, because if a younger, more rational person had shared some of the same opinions publicly, they would have been accused of crimes against the government.
"Shall we say grace?" Mr. Cramblit said when the food was all on the table and the people all seated. Everyone bowed their heads. "Dear Cosmic Parent, we thank you for this food and for the time that family and friends can gather together to celebrate each other. We thank you also for our son Johnny and ask for his protection as he goes to train in two weeks. May this time be pleasant for all. May we all grow to recognize those parts within us that can become so like you in your cosmic love. In the name of Joshua Lewis, the son you sent to guide us to enlightenment, Amen."
"Amen," repeated everyone at the table. Almost everyone. Johnny noticed a strange expression on Joshua's face during the prayer, almost as if he was disagreeing with their father's words, and he didn't say "amen" after the prayer. But he had no time to think about that. He was too busy piling turkey, stuffing, and vegetables onto his plate.
Dinner was great. His mother's cooking was much better than the food provided at the police academy, and knowing that the food on the prison transport ship wouldn't be much better than that, he was going to enjoy all the good food he could get before it was too late. Conversation was pleasant at first. Everyone asked Johnny questions about his training and about his assignment. His parents, Kelly, Joshua, and even Steve were looking very proudly at him as he answered all the inquiries, and he even thought he saw Aimee looking at him in a new way. Maybe his uniform helped her to see him in a new light. He hoped so.
But conversation soon turned sour when Peter Neason, who wrote some of the propaganda tracks for the government, mentioned a piece of current events that was sure to spark a lively discussion at the Cramblit's dinner table. Mr. Cramblit had often warned him not to bring such things up, especially with Nanny around, but Peter rarely listened.
"I'll bet you're itching to get back to Earth and start enforcing some laws, eh Johnny?" he said. "They probably could have used a man like you down town this morning."
Johnny, who had been on a transport shuttle and out of the news loop, asked, "What happened down town today?"
"They busted up a church service," Peter said. Then he sneered, "Christians! Meeting in an old subway tunnel. There must have been fifty of them!"
"What were they doing?" Steve asked. The last group of religious offenders to be rounded up had been planning on assassinating Capital City's mayor.
"Singing," Peter said. "They were singing one of those old songs about how we're all evil and only Jesus can save us, or some sh__ like that. Pathetic. You would think after fifty years, such ignorant hate speech would be gone!"
"So they weren't hurting anybody?" Nanny said. "Since when is it illegal to get together and sing? What's next, raiding karaoke bars?"
Even though Johnny thought that the subversive and out of date teachings of the old Christian Church were dangerous and needed to be squashed, his grandmother's comment caused him to laugh.
"There were children there!" Peter replied to the old lady. "Little kids being brainwashed by those fanatics to hate the government and try and destroy everything that Joshua Lewis brought to our world! They were hurting people!"
"He's right," Uncle Howard said. "You know that when Lewis first came on the scene, many Christian fundamentalists called him the Anti-Jesus, or something like that."
"Antichrist, dear," Anne said.
"Yeah," Howard said. "And they said that with Lewis in charge, the world would be gone in seven years! They're about forty three years too late for that."
"Not everyone said he was the Antichrist," Nanny said.
"Yeah," Peter said, "the ones who didn't call him that joined the government church! The very fact that we're still here proves the Christians wrong!"
"Peter, that's enough," Mr. Cramblit said.
"No!" Peter said. "Something needs to be done! Now that you've got a cop in the family, maybe you can finally do something about those fanatics!"
"There are many laws that need enforcing, Mr. Neason," Joshua said. "Johnny may not be assigned to the religion task force."
"If I were him," Peter said, "I would request to be. There's no greater threat to the Enlightened Society than those fanatics and their backwards views. They blew up the Golden Gate Bridge last year, remember?"
"That was Muslims, not Christians," Johnny said. "There is a difference."
"They teach you that at the academy?"
"Actually, Mr. Neason, they do," Johnny replied. "A big portion of our studies involves the differences and similarities in deviant religious groups and how to deal with them. Muslims are more combative, more prone to violence. Their threats are much more tangible than the Christians. Most Christians wouldn't resort to violence, but their message is what's the dangerous part. It's sneaky and non threatening, but if allowed to spread, it would greatly damage our society."
"So they must be stopped!" Peter said. "Johnny agrees with me!"
"We all agree with you, Peter," Mrs. Cramblit said. Nanny snorted, but they all ignored her. "But this is hardly appropriate dinner conversation. Let's talk about something else."
"Fine," Peter said. "Joshua, how are things down at your office?"
There was no reply. They all looked to see that Joshua had left the dinner table. Nobody notice him go.
"Maybe he's in the bathroom," Kelly said.
"Anyway," Mr. Cramblit said, "Krista, you've outdone yourself this year! Dinner is excellent!"
And they went back to eating. They began talking about pointless and noncontroversial things like the weather and the new class of transport shuttles. When Joshua hadn't returned to the table after five or ten minutes, Johnny went looking for him.
He found his brother sitting on the back porch. It was getting dark and thick snow was falling, but he wasn't wearing a jacket. He was bent over, his head cradled in his lap.
"Hey, Josh," Johnny said. "What happened to you? You okay?"
Joshua looked up. "Yeah, Johnny. I'm fine. I just couldn't listen to that conversation anymore."
"Yeah, Mr. Neason can get a bit annoying at times," Johnny agreed, sitting on the porch steps beside his brother. "I guess it comes from writing all those government tracks."
"How can he sit there and spew all that hate about people and then call them haters?" Joshua almost yelled. "It's ignorant! I know Christianity is illegal, but if you know anything about what they teach, they don't promote hate!"
"Peter Neason writes literature about Christians for the government," Johnny said. "I think he knows a little about them. Besides, wasn't it Christians who used to lynch homosexuals and blow up abortion clinics?"
"Some of them, maybe," Joshua said, "but if you got to know them, you would see that there's so much more to Christianity than gay bashing and murdering doctors."
"If you got to know them?" Johnny asked. "When have you gotten to know Christians?"
Joshua looked at Johnny with an expression he'd seen many times before. It was the look he had when he realized that he had just said something that was going to get him into trouble. If Joshua was associating with Christians, it would be enough to imprison him for a year. But the expression was gone as soon as it had appeared.
"A couple of years ago," he began, "while I was in med school, we were called to an emergency situation. There was a government raid on a church group meeting, a lot like the one Mr. Neason was talking about today, and a few of the prisoners had been wounded. They needed medical attention. They didn't want to waste the resources and time of any licensed doctors, so they took a few students and killed two birds with one stone. They got their prisoners treated, even though they would probably be mistreated for the rest of their lives anyway, and they gave us some valuable field training. I spent almost a week there with them, and I saw how they are. They aren't the hate mongers that Peter Neason tries to make them out to be. They're actually quite friendly."
"You know as well as I do that that is their biggest weapon," Johnny said. "They are deceptively friendly and talk about love and peace and all that stuff, but in the end they snare you. You find yourself wrapped up in their bizarre beliefs and rejecting everything that the Enlightened Society stands for."
"I know that," Joshua said. "But I still think that denouncing hate by spreading more hate is ridiculous."
"You almost sound like a sympathizer," Johnny said. "Maybe you should read one of those tracks again."
"Maybe," Joshua said. He stood up. Johnny stood up as well. "Let's get back to dinner. We probably need to stop Nanny from stabbing Peter with a salad fork or something."
Laughing, the brothers went back inside. Joshua went into the dining room first and sat down as if nothing had happened. Johnny stayed back and looked at his brother for a moment. Some of the things that Joshua was saying had scared him. He hoped that nothing was wrong with him, but he would have to keep an eye out for any further signs. If Joshua was in trouble, Johnny wanted to help him before it was too late.
TO BE CONTINUED