Civilly Disobedient (Calm Act Genesis Book 1) Read Free Page A

lanes, outbound from the city, heading to Cape Cod and the islands for the long weekend, were a parking lot, not moving at all. But even the inbound lanes were stop-and-go. From the year’s freaky winter and storms, the interstate sported massive pot-holes, with one or two lanes blocked off at a time for repair. Car exhaust and millions of holiday weekend travelers mingled into a massive fug of frustration and smog.
    I considered my can-do’s. I took public transportation whenever possible. I grew my own vegetables. I tried to eat locally grown food – no hardship there, living on the Connecticut shore. The local vegetable and fruit supply was excellent. I used power sparingly. Maybe I could telecommute. Maybe I could get 30 or more people to telecommute from my branch at work.
    Maybe I could quit my job and do something more to stop climate change. My comfortable, successful, downright fun career working with great people. No, I loved my work at UNC, no matter how irritating the employee surveillance was. Looking at the millions of cars on I-95, the millions of homes in New York City, my actions couldn’t make a dent in the scale of the problem, even locally.
    Well, I was open to the possibility. I turned back to my book. Hogan remembered to slip me my garish new green T-shirt, with an encouraging smile. He slid in beside me to talk some more and while away the miles.
    -oOo-
    The Philadelphia throng wasn’t just a few times bigger than Boston. Philadelphia boasts that 40% of the population of the U.S. lives within an easy day’s drive. A whole lot of them drove to the rally that Saturday. The downtown one-way streets were completely gridlocked. After nearly an hour, the bus driver simply opened the door and pointed which direction to start walking.
    Not that it was hard to guess. There were plenty of people on the streets headed thataway, after all.
    “Great success, huh?” Hogan cried, providing me an unneeded hand off the bus. “Woot! Weather Vane central says we’ve got half a million so far!” He was grinning from ear to ear.
    I wished I could share his enthusiasm. Mostly I wondered whether the city of Philadelphia had signed off on this. Why hadn’t I stayed home to enjoy the beach today, like Mangal? “Where and when do I rendezvous with the bus home?” I asked in concern.
    “Ah, don’t know yet,” he said. “But it’s the Weather Vane bus to New Haven. Just ask later at one of our organizer tents. Have a great time, Dee!”
    I grinned back at him gamely. As soon as I was out of his sight, I prudently ducked into an air conditioned bar/restaurant to eat and use the restroom before joining the march. I enjoyed an authentic Philly cheese-steak, dripping with grease, with a side of cole slaw. Couldn’t visit Philadelphia without that.
    I took a moment to check in with Mangal on my burner phone. I let him know that I had arrived and was fine so far. He checked the news for me, but saw nothing about the protest growing to half a million people. Exaggeration? Or news blackout? I asked the waiter about the local news, which played on a TV behind the bar. She said they didn’t mention Philadelphia being inundated with a third again its own population in visiting demonstrators. But the crowd did seem a lot bigger than usual. Perhaps Hogan’s numbers were inflated, I thought.
    It was tempting to stay in the air conditioned comfort of the bar and skip the march. Hazy and sunny, it was already an unseasonable 94 degrees and humid outside, even before the mid-afternoon heat. The forecast expected to break the 99 degree all-time record high for the day. But, I was here to be counted. As concerned, or something. And I had to admit, I was concerned about climate change – record-breaking high temperatures, for instance. So I changed into Hogan’s gaudy green T-shirt, topped up my water bottle and applied some sunscreen, and hit the streets again.
    The streets were even more crowded now than when I ducked into