Season 1, Episode 3 - The Ring Dings XI - "The Secret Origin of Harriet Jones"

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The elevated rail station approached in the distance. The whole world looked gray; heavy April rains drenched the entire city of Narragansett, but it seemed like their cold fury was directed at Harriet's station in particular.

Even with the umbrella, Harriet needed to take a moment to wipe errant rain drops off of her glasses. She sighed; on days like today, even something simple like wiping down her glasses almost proved to be too much effort. In fact, Harriet would have rather kept her glasses off, because the world seemed so much better when she couldn't see it clearly. But it was April, and there were taxes to be done, long hours to be worked, and the boss would have her ass if she showed up late to work again.

Other commuters, dressed in their business suits and school uniforms, crowded the gray sidewalk. Rushing for what? Harriet wondered. Another day of being kicked around by the powers that be?

A few people looked at Harriet with scorn for stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Harriet just couldn't gather the energy to move. It almost seemed funny to her, all these people in a hurry to get nowhere.

Really, what was she doing that morning? With her life? Waking up to a job she hated, going home to an empty apartment, running around in circles...and for what? Did she really get any happiness out of this? Money was supposed to be her way out of this – but to make that money, she had no free time, so on and on she went on an endless cycle that was only broken by nightly self-medication with cheap beer and long looks out the window.

Just what am I doing?

Why am I here?

Circles and circles.

Harriet almost wanted to laugh in the rain, but she narrowed her eyes when she saw the poster on the brick wall next to her.

The poster depicted a stone-faced President Pulaski above a crowd of hands desperately reaching upwards toward him. The caption below him read A QUIET PEACE UNDER LIBERTY.

Under liberty...

Harriet looked to the other side of the street, where two Staties leaned against the brick wall of a store, idling, smoking cigarettes, rifles slung around their blue-uniformed shoulders.

That made her laugh.

She sighed and supposed for about the fifth time that week that she needed to kill herself.

Brushing those thoughts away, she placed her glasses back on and rejoined the masses on their rat race through life.

Except...

Harriet stopped at the bottom of the concrete stairs leading up to the elevated station. People forced themselves up this long set of stairs, as if the mere fact that they went upward must mean they lead to somewhere good.

Nearly every day Harriet ascended these steps, every step tougher than the last.

What's that myth...punished by the gods, Sisyphus pushed a boulder up a mountain every day, only for it to roll back down to the bottom. Every day he did this. And we must imagine him to be happy.

Harriet just couldn't do it.

No more boulders, no more circles.

She pushed her way through the bottlenecked crowd, away from the stairs, away from the station. To where, she had no idea. No family or friends to go to. But anywhere would be better than here.

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Harriet ended up in a small park on the edge of the Charles River. The water snaked its way through the city; Harriet wished she could've called it blue, but years of pollution muddied the river. Chemicals and toxins dumped into the river shaded it a repulsive brown and orange and dead fish occasionally dotted the river. At the moment, a patch of oil meandered slowly past her, and the stench from the river in general and the oil in particular almost overwhelmed her.

Harriet collapsed her umbrella, letting the rain wash over her. The sorry-looking river offered her no remorse, only a grim reminder of the world she lived in.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

There really is no escape, huh...

The rain suddenly stopped.

Harriet blinked. It wasn't that the rain had stopped...she looked up and realized someone held a red umbrella over her head.

The umbrella belonged to a tall man, dressed in an impeccable white trenchcoat, two medals on his chest. His smile looked easy, his eyes jovial, confident, ambitious; he stared straight ahead, into the Charles River and the slow current full of rain.

Military uniform...don't tell me he knows that I'm a Rddhi user...

But that wouldn't make any sense. Users didn't tend to stray far from their districts.

Harriet eyed him uneasily.

"Gathering all the summer rains...the swift Mogami River," the man recited.

Harriet sighed. So he's just trying to score...

"Is that how you pick up women?" Harriet dryly asked. "Quoting random poetry and holding umbrellas without asking?"

The man laughed. "Forgive me. I tend to get lost in the moment. I saw you here in the rain, without an umbrella, and it wouldn't be very fair of me not to share mine, no?"

Harriet didn't say anything to that. She didn't like the casual confidence he displayed when answering.

The man kept looking at the river.

"You know anyone with Rddhi powers are supposed to self-report, right?"

The day just kept getting better and better. She felt pissed at the man and herself and the world.

"Are you going to report me?" Harriet asked, her eyes narrowed.

The man kept smiling. "It's all up to you."

"Up to me?"

"It depends on the answer you give me."

Harriet crossed her arms. "What's the question?"

"Why didn't you self-report?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"One I'd like the answer to."

Harriet sighed. "Isn't it obvious? Self-report and you become the military's lapdog and test subject. I'd never get my freedom back. I'd be there for life."

"Do you feel free now?"

Free? You call ten hour shifts as a corporate drone, enslaved to the commute in and commute out, the deadlines, the subservience to the elites...you call that free?

Harriet didn't use that as an answer.

"What's it to you?" Harriet said instead.

"You could say what I'm really interested in is gathering information," the man explained. "I want to know the views and opinions of the common citizen. Not the state-mandated answer. The real answer."

Harriet took a step away, outside the umbrella, letting the rain drench her in its cold embrace once again. "This sounds like a set-up. Are you going to report me to the State Police?"

The man raised a calming hand. "Nothing of the sort. I'm on a mission, you see. One day, I'll hold the fate of this nation in my hands. By asking citizens how they feel, I can learn how to better handle that fate."

This guy's nuts. Maybe he's not even a Rddhi user. Maybe he's just some strung-out bum with nothing better to do.

Yet that look on his face...there's no doubt or fear or anxiety. It's...calm...in-tuned with...something, something much bigger than myself.

"I unlocked my Rddhi powers in college," Harriet found herself explaining, looking away from the man, feeling uneasy. The long-grip of the government through their watchdogs, the Staties, could be found across the city.

Oh well, I don't really plan on sticking around much longer anyway.

"The last mandatory Rddhi examinations are in high school since the odds of manifesting powers in college and beyond are so low," Harriet reflected. "I was relieved that if I had to unlock them, they at least came to me in college. There's nothing more I feared than belonging to something permanently, with no escape or opportunities for myself."

"And then..." the man lead on.

"And then...I became a slave to the system. Ironic, isn't it? Whether I was a user or not, I'd be a slave to something. There's no outlet, is there? You're a slave to the military establishment, I'm a slave to the corporate world. We'll wake up, go to work, and die, just like that, in the service of something that's only in it for itself, giving nothing back."

The man grinned. "I think you and I could be great friends."

"Friends? Get out of here. The last thing I want to do is get picked up by a guy in the park who recites cheap poetry then talks some bullshit about fate. I can handle everything myself, thank you very much. I can self-medicate, I can find ways out."

"You know, your Rddhi speaks just as much as you do," the man explained. "I can sense your Rddhi. Your Rddhi isolates itself from the wider field. But it's also flat. Bored. Given up on hope. You see, the universe ebbs and flows. Yours lies down, motionless, and keeps to itself."

"What do you know about me?"

"I've seen many types of Rddhi. And I've seen many types of people. There's a part of you that still wants to believe."

The man extended his hand. "Believe in me. I need Rddhi users like you. We can build a new fate for the nation."

Harriet backed away again. "What are you, some kind of cultist? Government informant? Get the hell out of here!"

Red energy flared from Harriet's hand and a compass-and-pencil materialized out of her sleeve, sliding perfectly into her hand. "Get away from me!"

Harriet lunged, aiming the sharp ends of the pencil and compass point toward the man's heart. Aw, Christ, I've really done it now, Harriet realized, unable to stop her hand. I'm going to kill a man in uniform. It'll all be over. I can't escape from it now. This is it.

Her hand stopped. Harriet realized the man had grabbed it mid-swing, quick as a flash...without using any Rddhi at all.

Who...who is he?

"I appreciate the fire you just demonstrated," the man said calmly. "I told you, we'd work well together. But the error is on me for not selling my cause well enough to you."

Red, green, and blue energy swirled calmly around the man's arm, a perfect vortex that Harriet lost herself too.

"Here, let me show you..."

And for the first time in her life, Harriet saw the world clearly.